Toni Cade Bambara, writer, filmmaker, and political activist, says she has known "the power of the word" since she was a child on the streets of Harlem. Born Miltona Mirkin Cade in 1939 in New York City, she adopted the African name "Bambara" in 1970. Upon her death in 1995, the New York Times called her a "major contributor to the emerging of black women's literature, along with the writers Toni Morrison and Alice Walker." She grew up in Harlem, Queens, and Jersey City. In 1959, at the age of twenty, she received her B.A. in Theatre Arts and English from Queens College and won the John Golden award for short fiction. While enrolled as a graduate student of American fiction at the City College of New York, she worked in both civic and local neighborhood programs in education and drama and studied theater in Europe. After receiving her...