In Race, Gender, and Desire, Elliott ButlerEvans draws a connection between Bambara and Walter Benjamin's definition of a storyteller, "a person 'always rooted in the people'" through whom "the story becomes a medium through which groups of people are unified, values sustained, and a shared world view sedimented." But where her earlier works, collections of stories, Gorilla, My Love (1960) and The Sea Birds Are Still Alive (1974), and the novel, The Salt Eaters (1981), focus upon segments of the African American community—young girls and women—Those Bones Are Not My Child extends its definition of community.

Bambara's "A Sort of Preface" to the first collection, Gorilla, My Love, provides an interesting lens for comparison between the works, as she writes, "So I deal in straight-up fiction myself, cause I value my family and friends, and mostly cause I lie a lot anyway," for even in...