Cultural Reproduction Through Literature as Activism

The following is a description of how Toni Cade Bambara used her writing as a way to participate in the Freedom Struggle. Much of what appears below are Toni's own words.

Writing is one of the ways I do my work in this world. -Toni Cade Bambara

A writer, like an other cultural worker, like any other member of the community, ought to try to put her/his skills in the service of the community. -Toni Cade Bambara

Toni Cade Bambara describes her writing as being one of the ways in which she participates in struggle. Through writing Bambara celebrated the tradition of resistance and attempted to tap Black potential, and try to join the chorus of voices that argues that exploitation and misery are neither inevitable nor necessary. Writing is one of the ways in which she participated in the transformation—one of the ways that she practiced the commitment to explore bodies of knowledge for the usable wisdoms they yield. She understood that she was not born in the time that she was born by accident. She understood that she was being groomed to perform particular work in this world and she used her writing to do so.

Bambara stressed the importance of accurate information, verifiable facts, sound analyses, responsible research, principled study, and people’s assessment of the meaning of their lives. She was interested in usable truths. She found that anyone who had a greater capacity to love than she did was a teacher to her. She made it a point not to conjure up characters for the express purpose of despising them. She chose to use her energy to produce “ugly” because “ugly” is not the truth that can save or redeem us. She felt that if she was not laughing while she was working then she was not communicating nourishment which is what she was striving for, because she was convinced that everything will be alright.

She wrote to emphasize the fact that the Freedom Struggle is not over. She worked to maintain the spirit of the movement in a time when voices were becoming mute. “Broken Field Running” a story in The Seabirds are Still Alive is about a teacher who has to maintain her faith in the capacity for transformation, just as people during the time it was written were trying to maintain the fervent spirit of the Freedom Struggle. Bambara wrote her works as a reflection of what was currently happening around her in order to send a message and to provide solutions but most of all optimism. She believed that during times of high consciousness, one has to build the network and the foundtion to sustain one through periods of high conflict and low consciousness. Bambara would not succumb to infusing her writing with defeatism, death, or vengence because she was not interested in collaborating with the program of the forces that sytematically underdevelop. Thus in her stories, people are not defeated, just as in the struggle we will not be defeated. This is a usable truth.

Bambara believed that words should be taken serioulsy because they set things into motion, they conjure, set up atmospheres. She did not admire the writings that used despair, insanity, or suicide to protest oppression. Instead she focuses on resistance. In “Seabirds” from The Seabirds are Still Alive Bambara’s combatant mother and daughter characters constantly repeat outloud and in their heads, “Nothing, I’ll tell you nothing.you’ll never break out spirits. We cannot be defeated.” This quote is repeated throughout the story.

Bambara chose the tile “Salt Eaters” for her novel as a representation of struggle and transformation. Salt is a partial anecdote for snakebite in which after applying the tourniquet, one also eats salt and applies a salt poultice to the wound. This reflects that fact that to struggle, to develop, one needs to master ways to neutralize poisons. “Salt” also brings the parabble of Lot’s Wife to the forefront: without belief in the capacity for transformation, one can become ossified.

Gorilla, My Love is political in a more covert fashion. Each story in Gorilla, My Love has a political message that highlights the need for a community to come together or the effects of a united community and family, such as in “Raymond’s Run” and “Gorilla, My Love.” The opening story, “My Man Bovanne,” highlights the importance of recognizing all members, young and old, in building a movement. “The Johnson Girls” highlight the beauty of friendship and the need for members of a community to take care of one another; such as helping pay tuition or working together to end a crisis.

In “The Lesson” Toni Cade Bambara iterates the need for positive black role models. The story focuses on an enlightened black outsider coming into a black community in order to make an impact on the children that reside their. “The Lesson” describes a community leader who takes a group of children on excursions, with or without their co-operation, that exposes them to cultures outside of their own. The story ends with the children’s realization of the gross differences in income distribution. The teacher points out to the children “imagine for a minute what kind of society it is in which some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven.”

Although the stories in Gorilla, My Love are not as overtly political as those in The Sea Birds are Still Alive they create prototypes for the creation of liberated space, movements, and revolutionaries.

Sources: Sternburg, Janet, ed. The Writer on Her Work. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1980.