NONFICTION - Sept. 4, 1994

LAUGHING IN THE DARK: From Colored Girl to Woman of Color--A Journey from Prison to Power by Patrice Gaines (Crown: $24; 288 pp.) At 21, Patrice Gaines seemed to be going nowhere fast. A single mother with a drug problem and terrible taste in men, she had already served time in jail and was very busy “trying to live through one day--then another. Working in low-paying jobs . . . budgeting carefully, never able to save; . . . trying to turn an ugly cheap apartment into a cheerful home a child would love to live in. And always, desperately searching for that man who would make me feel better.” Gaines’ autobiography, “Laughing in the Dark,” chronicles the rough, rocky path she took through a myriad dangerous pitfalls until finally reaching her current position of award-winning Washington Post reporter and, even more important, confident black female.

Gaines has avoided many potential traps in this wonderful book. She manages somehow to give us her entire life--all its pain and hard-won accomplishments--without ever once, not even for a single sentence, becoming indulgent, self-absorbed, or uninteresting. The descriptions of one person’s low self-esteem, impotent anger and struggle to find a place in the world are so well conceived that they transcend race and gender without ignoring them. Also, this is just a plain old good story, a tear jerker with a happy ending.

Perhaps the most admirable quality of Gaines’ writing is her ability to communicate exactly how it feels to be a black woman in America. Of course, no one of any other race will ever truly understand, but reading “Laughing In the Dark” is the next best thing.