Long Fiction:
The Salt Eaters, 1980
Those Bones Are Not My Child, 1999
Short Fiction:
Gorilla, My Love, 1972
The Sea Birds Are Still Alive: Collected Stories, 1977
Raymond’s Run: Stories for Young Adults, 1989
Screenplays:
The Bombing of Osage Avenue, 1986 (documentary)
W. E. B. Du Bois–A Biography in Four Voices, 1995 (with Amiri Baraka, Wesley Brown, and Thulani Davis)
Edited Texts:
The Black Woman: An Anthology, 1970
Tales and Stories for Black Folks, 1971
Southern Exposure 3, 1976 (periodical; Bambara edited vol. 3)
Miscellaneous:
“What It Is I Think I’m Doing Anyhow,” The Writer on Her Work, 1981 (Janet Sternburg, editor)
Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions: Fiction, Essays, and Conversations, 1996
Toni Cade Bambara (bam-BAHR-ah), born Miltona Mirkin Cade, was one of a group of African American writers who became involved in urban cultural and political activities in the 1960’s. While she lectured and organized rallies on civil rights issues, Bambara used these experiences as sources for essays and fiction. Bambara continued to work within the black urban environment by lecturing, filming, organizing, and teaching in colleges and community schools.
Toni Cade Bambara
Reared with her brother by a single mother in New York City, Bambara was encouraged to be self-sufficient and competent, yet she found women in every neighborhood who cared about black girls and offered liberal advice. One of Bambara’s major themes is that a strong ethic of caring for and helping one another sustains African Americans.
Bambara’s first published story, “Sweet Town,” appeared in Vendome magazine in 1959, the same year she received her B.A. in theater arts/English and the John Golden Award for Fiction from Queens College. During the 1960’s, Bambara did graduate work at City College of New York and social work for the Harlem Welfare Center, published her second story, “Mississippi Ham Rider,” in the Massachusetts Review, and studied at the Commedia del’Arte in Milan, Italy. She also completed her master’s degree, directed programs at Colony House in Brooklyn, and was a therapist for Metropolitan Hospital’s psychiatric division. She directed many local programs, including the Equivalency Program, the Veteran Reentry Program, the 8th Street Play Program, and the tutorial program at the Houston Street Public Library. From 1965 to 1969, she taught at City College of New York while she published widely in journals and magazines.
Bambara, still using the name Cade, published and edited an anthology entitled The Black Woman in 1970, a collection of poetry, short stories, and essays by well-known black writers and women students. Including some of her own work, it was the first of its kind in the United States. Shortly after its publication, she legally adopted the last name Bambara. A second anthology she edited, Tales and Stories for Black Folks, had great appeal in the black community. Many of the stories Bambara wrote as Toni Cade between 1959 and 1970 appeared in her most widely read collection, Gorilla, My Love. The stories focus on relationships between African Americans, and eight of the stories center on young children and adolescents as they respond to their environment. The title story is the most appealing. It is narrated by Hazel, a young girl frustrated and angry with “grown-ups” who never keep their promises to children, thereby creating confusion and disappointment. In another story, “The Johnson Girls,” Bambara illustrates the way a supportive group of family and friends helps a young woman survive personal crises.
Although Gorilla, My Love received enthusiastic reviews, there was a five-year span before the publication of her second collection of stories, The Sea Birds Are Still Alive. During these years, Bambara visited Cuba and Vietnam, where she met with numerous women and was impressed with the way they resolved color and class conflicts. She also relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, with her young daughter in 1974 and was writer-in-residence at Spelman College until 1977.
These experiences influenced The Sea Birds Are Still Alive, which contains a title story set in Southeast Asia. The focus of the characters is less on personal relationships and more on their involvement with community organizations. At least five of the stories focus on the need for people to organize and retain faith in their goals. Another five stories focus on relationships between black men and women. The stories are told with less humor than those in her first collection, and the communities are riven by strained or exploited relationships. Reviews were mixed, with some critics taking aim at the use of characters as vehicles for Bambara’s ideology.
In 1978, Bambara started writing her first novel, The Salt Eaters, which grew out of her concern that the black community was becoming splintered. Set in Claybourne, Georgia, the main character is Velma Henry, an effective organizer who is suffering a severe mental crisis and has attempted suicide. The breakdown is symbolic of the chaos of the entire community, for she and her husband, Obie, have been working to bring conservative and radical factions of Claybourne together. The major issues of the novel are whether Velma Henry and her community want to be healed and whether they can maintain themselves in a healthy state. The novel is rich and complex, with numerous characters contributing to the chorus of voices. Bambara suggests that spiritual renewal is possible among ethnic groups after the 1960’s.
Reviews of The Salt Eaters were mixed, with some reviewers troubled by its fractured time structure, fragmented dialogue, and repetitions. Bambara said that the novel is based on the rhythms of jazz. Although it was initially hard to sell this difficult first novel, both The Salt Eaters and Gorilla, My Love came out in paperback editions in 1980, and The Salt Eaters won the American Book Award.
Bambara worked mostly in the film medium from the mid-1980’s to her death in late 1995, teaching scriptwriting and producing numerous scripts for television. Among her work was a documentary about the 1985 bombing of the MOVE headquarters, a collaboration with Louis Massiah entitled The Bombing of Osage Avenue. Some of her stories have also been adapted for film, including “Gorilla, My Love,” “Medley,” and “Witchbird.” Another collection of her short stories, titled Raymond’s Run: Stories for Young Adults, appeared in 1989. She died in a hospice in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, after a two-year struggle with cancer.