Toni Cade Bambara Biography

African-American short-story writer, novelist, and scriptwriter, born in New York, where she was educated at City University. During the early 1960s, when she emerged as a noted civil rights activist, she worked in a New York community centre. After teaching at City University, she became an assistant professor at Rutgers University in 1969. Her writing is closely aligned with her political convictions, which she has summarized as ‘Pan-Africanist -socialist-feminist’. Gorilla, My Love (1972) and The Sea Birds Are Still Alive (1977) are collections of her short stories, which are distinguished by the acuteness of their socio-cultural observations and their energetically colloquial idioms. The Salt Eaters, her novel of 1980, reflects the profound changes of mood in the USA after the Vietnam War. Her work as a scriptwriter includes the screenplay for the film of Toni Morrison's novel Tar Baby (1981). She is the editor of the widely read anthologies The Black Woman (1970) and Tales and Stories for Black Folks (1971).