Toni Cade Bambara

Set in Claybourne, a town somewhere in the South, The Salt Eaters is the story of a community of black people who are searching for the healing properties of salt, and who witness an event that will change their lives forever. "A book full of marvels".--The New Yorker.

The Salt Eaters

Fifteen short stories record the author's ideas about the challenge and complexity of contemporary life.

Gorilla, My Love

A collection of early, emerging works from some of the most celebrated African American female writers who remain strong when the weight of a world filled with racism and gender discrimination wants to drag them down. When it was first published in 1970, The Black Woman introduced readers to an astonishing new wave of voices that demanded to be heard. In this groundbreaking volume of original essays, poems, and stories, a chorus of outspoken women—many who would become leaders in their fields, such as bestselling novelist Alice Walker, poets Audre Lorde and Nikki Giovanni, writer Paule Marshall, activist Grace Lee Boggs, and musician Abbey Lincoln among them— tackled issues surrounding race and sex, body image, the economy, politics, labor, and much more. Their words still resonate with truth, relevance, and insight today as the fight for racial and gender equality continues to rage on.

An Anthology

The Black Woman

A Novel

Those Bones Are Not My Child

Presents a fictionalized account of one family's nightmare as they learn their child is a victim of Atlanta serial killer Wayne Williams.

Those Bones are Not My Child

bell hooks

Julie Dash

The Making of an African American Woman's Film

Daughters of the Dust

Ten stories of Black life written with Ms. Bambara's characteristic vigor, sensibility and winning irony. The stories range from the timid and bumbling confusion of a novice community worker in "The Apprentice" to the love-versus-politics crisis of an organizers wife, to the dark and bright notes of the title story about the passengers on a refugee ship from a war-torn Asian nation. Young girls, weary men, lovers, frauds and revolutionaries -- Toni Cade Bambara handles them all the expertise, passion and huge talent. As the Chicago Daily News said, "Ms. Bambara grabs you by the throat...she dazzles, she charms."

Stories

The Sea Birds are Still Alive

The War of the Wall

Bell Hooks

Describes the author's sixteen-year struggle to complete her film

Collects writings by the late African American author

Fiction, Essays, and Conversations

Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions

At once a gripping thriller and a hreatbreaking elegy, this is Toni Cade Bambara's powerful final testament, a hymn to Atlanta's missing children. Zala Spencer is barely surviving on the margins of Atlanta's booming economy when she awakens one summer's morning in 1980 to find her teenage son, Sonny, has disappeared. Edited by Toni Morrison as part of Bambara's final novel, Those Bones Are Not My Child, this slim masterpiece leaves us with an enduring and revelatory chronicle of an American nightmare. BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

First Light

Ten stories of Black life written with Ms. Bambara's characteristic vigor, sensibility and winning irony. The stories range from the timid and bumbling confusion of a novice community worker in "The Apprentice" to the love-versus-politics crisis of an organizers wife, to the dark and bright notes of the title story about the passengers on a refugee ship from a war-torn Asian nation. Young girls, weary men, lovers, frauds and revolutionaries -- Toni Cade Bambara handles them all the expertise, passion and huge talent. As the Chicago Daily News said, "Ms. Bambara grabs you by the throat...she dazzles, she charms." Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Collected Stories

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection The story of the storm went like this: it was so cold that the neighborhood families burned anything they could to stay warm. The mayor arranged an emergency school bus to get the kids to school. But only the children worried about how the dogs were holding up. “Ice” exhibits the commitment to storytelling and the intersection between fiction and politics that made Toni Cade Bambara one of the most important voices of her generation, and an advocate of recognition for African American women writers. A selection from Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions, a posthumous collection of Bambara’s uncollected writings, included here with a loving preface by Toni Morrison—a discussion of her relationship with Bambara and the unprecedented “heart cling” of her fiction. An eBook short.

Conversations with the author of the acclaimed works Gorilla, My Love, The Salt Eaters, and Those Bones Are Not My Child

Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara

Toni Cade Bambara takes the reader on a journey from New York to the Deep South and back in this collection of short stories. The book's concerns are with contemporary Black culture and Toni Cade Bambara's writing is rooted in that experience.

A Study Guide for Toni Cade Bambara's "Those Bones Are Not My Child"

Presents stories, poems, and essays by Black women discussing topics such as politics, racism in education, the Black man, sex, the Pill, and child-raising in the ghetto.

This suspenseful novel portrays a community--and a family--under siege, during the shocking string of murders of black children in Atlanta in the early 1980s. Written over a span of twelve years, and edited by Toni Morrison, who calls Those Bones Are Not My Child the author's magnum opus, Toni Cade Bambara's last novel leaves us with an enduring and revelatory chronicle of an American nightmare. Having elected its first black mayor in 1980, Atlanta projected an image of political progressiveness and prosperity. But between September 1979 and June 1981, more than forty black children were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered throughout "The City Too Busy to Hate." Zala Spencer, a mother of three, is barely surviving on the margins of a flourishing economy when she awakens on July 20, 1980 to find her teenage son Sonny missing. As hours turn into days, Zala realizes that Sonny is among the many cases of missing children just beginning to attract national attention. Growing increasingly disillusioned with the authorities, who respond to Sonny's disappearance with cold indifference, Zala and her estranged husband embark on a desperate search. Through the eyes of a family seized by anguish and terror, we watch a city roiling with political, racial, and class tensions.

A community of Black faith healers witness an event that will change their lives forever in this "hard-nosed, wise, funny" novel (Los Angeles Times). Set in a fictional city in the American South, the novel also "inhabits the nonlinear, sacred space and sacred time of traditional African religion” (The New York Times Book Review). Though they all united in their search for the healing properties of salt, some of them are centered, some are off-balance; some are frightened, and some are daring. From the men who live off welfare women to the mud mothers who carry their children in their hides, the novel brilliantly explores the narcissistic aspect of despair and the tremendous responsibility that comes with physical, spiritual, and mental well-being.

Hazel is determined to beat her rival in an upcoming race, but when she sees her brother Raymond running alongside her on the track, she realizes there are more important things than winning.

Toni Cade Bambara

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