Toni Cade Bambara Summary

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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 ... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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&#... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

In the following essay, Stanford analyzes the relationship between Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Bambara's The Salt Eaters. 1 What happens to “the second sex” in a n... Read more

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,... Read more