Colored Television

Hampton comes to see Jane at Brett’s home studio. She puts out her manuscript so that it looks like a place where a real writer works. Hampton, who is under the impression the house is hers, asks why she has Brett’s wedding photo on her desk. Jane lies and says Brett is her cousin. Hampton sees Lenny in the kitchen and asks about his background. Jane tells Hampton that Lenny comes from a bourgeois family, works as an abstract painter, and went to Oberlin College. Hampton says Jane is like him and kneads her shoulder.

Hampton launches into a soliloquy about how the white teachers at his public school had tried to “break him,” but he had succeeded anyway. Then, he changes his tone and gives Jane a lecture about how he was disappointed in the ideas she had come up with for the show so far. He says he should have hired Crystal Bookman, who is “mixed too, though she never mentioned it to anyone until it seemed like she could get some advantage from it” (215). He tells Jane she has to “represent.” He advises her to take a break and think about the premise of the show.