When Gorilla, My Love, the collection of short stories which includes "Blues Ain't No Mockin Bird," was published in 1972, it was hailed by critics as a powerful portrayal of the experience of blacks in America. A writer in the Saturday Review remarked that the book was "among the best portraits of black life to appear in some time."

No full-length study of "Blues Ain't No Mockin Bird" has been completed, but critical discussion of Bambara as a short story writer generally concur on one point: Bambara is exemplary for her ability to capture the dialects and speech patterns of the characters she portrays. In an essay, "Youth in Toni Cade Bambara's Gorilla, My Love," Nancy D. Hargrove writes that Bambara's narrators speak "conversationally and authentically." Anne Tyler, herself a fiction writer, praises "the language of her characters, which is so startlingly beautiful without once striking a...