Those Bones Are Not My Child Summary
Toni Cade Bambara

Those Bones Are Not My Child Summary

Those Bones Are Not My Child illustrates Bambara's attempt to tell her community's story. Locating the novel in the historical moment of the Atlanta child murders, Bambara examines its black community, voicing the stories overlooked by the journalists and authorities at the rime. As Bambara states in the aforementioned interview, "We've gotten the media story, or the media version, the police version, but we've yet to get the domestic version or the community story." Although its focus is the abductions and murders of forty children, it presents a larger picture; perhaps most importantly, the novel seeks to redefine the African American community.

This is a community desperately in need of healing. Steeped with racial tension, Atlanta is divided between parents and policy-makers, the community-run STOP organization and the government-appointed Task Force, activism and indifference. Ostensibly, the community has only itself when all other avenues fail to assist, or...

(read more from the Short Guide)