She thinks that she will bring Philly home to Joe but in the farce that ensues on the street, Violet insists that she had no intention of kidnapping the child. Violet thinks of the child as a source of light that will be potent and salvific enough to repair her marriage. Philly has been left unattended because his sister had gone upstairs to retrieve her favorite 'Trombone Blues' album. Walking down the street, she notices a baby buggy and decides to take the child, Philly, for a walk to the corner of the block.

Violet's effort to build a family is as humorous as it is pathetic and doomed. She is convinced that this will breach the gap separates her from her husband. As Violet thinks about her loneliness and her grandmother down south, she has the sudden urge to build a family. Violet is lonely and regrets that she does not have an extensive family to fill the quiet of her apartmenta quiet that is exacerbated by her ejection of the birds. Violet is married and she lives with her husband, Joe Trace, but she is not wealthy as she makes little money as an unlicensed hairdresser, arriving at her clients' residences. On one afternoon, Violet began carelessly wandering the sidewalks and then, for no apparent reason, she sat down in the middle of street, surrounded by a few concerned neighbors. We learn that she has been living in Harlem for several years, but city life is difficult and the narrator hints that maybe the stresses of Harlem are finally wearing Violet down. The novel opens in the black Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem, the year is 1926 and on an ice-cold winter morning, a woman named Violet Trace has thrown open her windows and emptied her birdcages of their flocks, including her favorite, lonely bird that always said 'I love you.' Violet is a fifty-year-old black woman, she is skinny and emotionally unstable.

Jazz toni