Biography EssayToni Cade Bambara dedicated her life and her art to realizing positive change and healing in the black community. As writer, filrnmaker, educator, and political organizer, she celebrate...
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Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995), who initially gained recognition as a short story writer, has branched out into other genres and media in the course of her career, yet she continues to focus on issues ...
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Toni Cade Bambara was a well-known and respected civil rights activist, a professor of English and of African-American studies, the editor of anthologies of black literature, and the author of short s...
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Toni Cade Bambara is a well known and respected activist, professor of English and African American studies, editor of anthologies of Black literature, and author of short stories and a novel. "All wr...
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In many ways Toni Cade Bambara is one of the best representatives of the group of Afro-American writers who, during the 1960s, became directly involved in the cultural and sociopolitical activities in...
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During the twenty-five years of her career as an artist and civil-rights activist, Toni Cade Bambara became known for her enormously diverse talents and her adherence to the egalitarian principles tha...
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Critical Essay by Saturday Review
[The fifteen stories in Gorilla, My Love] are among the best portraits of black life to have appeared in some time. Written in a breezy, engaging style that owes a g...
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Critical Essay by Bell Gale Chevigny
[In "Gorilla, My Love" Toni Cade Bambara] takes time for a wide range of black relationships at home and in the neighborhood and for the discovery o...
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Critical Essay by Robie Macauley
In "The Sea Birds Are Still Alive: Collected Stories" Toni Cade Bambara … tries to avoid narcissistic stereotypes. Reading her stories is like co...
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Critical Essay by Anne Tyler
Miss Bambara writes with a marvelous vitality; her style, which draws its bite and verve from everyday black speech, comes close to poetry. But if you want to give [The S...
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Critical Essay by Anne Tyler
[In The Salt Eaters] a black woman is sitting on a stool in a hospital, watching numbly as a fabled healer named Minnie Ransom attempts to bring her out of her depression...
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Critical Essay by Laura Geringer
Bambara backs readers [of The Salt Eaters] into the eye of a hurricane and then releases them, along with her troubled protagonist, as the contaminated clouds burst. ...
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Critical Essay by Susan Lardner
The stories [in "Gorilla, My Love" and "The Sea Birds Are Still Alive"], describing the lives of black people in the North and the South, c...
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Critical Essay by John Wideman
In her highly acclaimed fiction …, [Toni Cade Bambara] emphasizes the necessity for black people to maintain their best traditions, to remain healthy and whole a...
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An American educator, editor, nonfiction writer, and critic, Guy-Sheftall has served as director of the Women's Research and Resource Center at Spelman College. In the following interview, Bamb...
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Vertreace is an American poet, educator, editor, and author of children's books. In the following essay, she examines the theme of community in Bambara's short fiction.
The question o...
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Gidley is an English educator and critic who frequently writes about Native Americans. In the essay below, he discusses narrative perspective in "Raymond's Run."
Toni Cade Bamb...
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In the following essay, Lyles discusses how Bambara's descriptions of sound and motion support the theme of revolution in The Sea Birds Are Still Alive.
One of the most arresting features of...
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In the following positive review of The Salt Eaters, Shipley deems the novel "an unqualified success," concluding that Bambara's literary voice "has refused to be tranquili...
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Jackson is an American poet, short story writer, and dramatist. Below, she offers a highly favorable assessment of The Salt Eaters.
Some extraordinary books define their time. By so doing they beco...
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Hargrove is an American educator and the author of works on T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath. In the following essay, first published in 1983 in Southern Quarterly, she examines Bambara's focus on ...
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In the following excerpt, McRobbie praises Gorilla, My Love for its political focus, poetic aspects, and its accurate representations of African-American culture.
[Gorilla, My Love,] Toni Cade Bamb...
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In the following essay, Burks analyzes the emphasis on communication and dialogue in Bambara's fiction, noting in particular the relationship Bambara sees between language and the Black freedom...
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Traylor is an American critic and educator. In the following essay, she examines Bambara's prose style, particularly its jazz-like characteristics.
Ultimately the genuinely modern writer ...
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Hull is an American educator and critic who has written extensively on Black American literature and Black women writers. She coedited All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us A...
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In the following essay, Willis discusses the political nature of The Sea Birds Are Still Alive, The Salt Eaters, and Gorilla, My Love, noting Bambara's emphasis on the importance of community, ...
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In the following review, Chevigny offers a positive assessment of the stories comprising Gorilla, My Love.
Readers following at least two movements will welcome more writing by Toni Cade, who edite...
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In the following essay, Hargrove lauds Bambara's portrayal of young characters in her first short fiction collection, maintaining that one of her "special gifts as a writer of fiction is...
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In the following interview, Bambara discusses her writing philosophy and the ways in which being an African-American woman influences her work.
Revolution begins with the self, in the self. The in...
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In the following essay, Butler-Evans explores B ambara's attempt to synthesize African-American nationalist and feminist ideologies in her short stories.
The several ways in which Toni Cade ...
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In the following essay, Vertreace examines the themes of community and identity in Bambara's stories.
The question of identity—of personal definition within the context of community...
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In the following essay, Gidley discusses the narrative technique of "Raymond's Run."
Toni Cade Bambara's "Raymond's Run" (1971), reprinted in her fi...
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In the following essay, Lyles explores the role of revolution in Bambara's collection, maintaining that revolutionary thought "is manifested through the depiction of the characters...
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In the following preface to Bambara's posthumous collection of essays and short fiction, Morrison praises her talent as a writer and offers personal reminiscences of the author.
Deep Sightin...
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In the following essay, Perkins discusses how the writings of Toni Cade Bambara address the exclusion of African American women both by Black men and white feminists.
Published in 1970, Toni Cade B...
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In the following essay, Lyles explores the “revolutionary thrust” of the stories compiled in The Sea Birds Are Still Alive.
One of the most arresting features of the short stories in ...
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In the following essay, Stanford analyzes the relationship between Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Bambara's The Salt Eaters.
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What happens to “the second sex” in a n...
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In the following essay, Comfort considers the mythical allusion in Bambara's “Sweet Town.”
Toni Cade Bambara's “Sweet Town,” published in Vendome magazine ...
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In the following review, Cookson provides a laudatory assessment of Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions.
In the next-to-longest piece in the posthumous collection Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions,...
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In the following review, Deck contends that Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions “confirms what we already know about Bambara’s artistry and informs us on personal and political matters th...
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