SOURCE: "Problematizing the Individual: Toni Cade Bambara's Stories for the Revolution," in Specifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1987, pp. 129-58.

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, individuality, and political and social activism.

Toni Cade Bambara's novel The Salt Eaters represents the attempt to link the spirit of black activism generated during the sixties to the very different political and social situation defined by the eighties. The swing toward political conservatism in national politics makes this a project fraught with problems and frustration. I know of no other novel that so poignantly yearns for cataclysmic social upheaval and understands so clearly the roots of black people's oppression in post-Civil Rights American society. It seems, in reading the novel...