Toni Cade Bambara

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Biography

Toni Cade Bambara was born in 1939 as Miltona Mirkin Cade in New York. She grew up in Harlem and saw the rising activism, which encouraged her to become an activist. She graduated from Queens College, New York in Theater Arts and English. After studying theater in France and Italy, she returned to New York to take an M.A. at the City College of the City University of New York. She started teaching there and also became involved in the civil rights and women’s movement. She was also writing stories and edited an important anthology, The Black Woman. She published her first book, a book of stories, in 1972. She continued to teach, working as a community activist as well as writing. Her first novel – The Salt Eaters – which is her best-known work, appeared in 1980. As well as writing stories, novels and essays, she also made a couple of films. She died of colon cancer in 1995.

Bibliography

1972 Gorilla, My Love (stories)
1977 The Sea Birds Are Still Alive (stories)
1980 The Salt Eaters (novel)
1985 Geraldine Moore : The Poet (children’s)
1990 Raymond’s Run (story)
1995 Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions: Fiction, Essays, and Conversations
1999 Those Bones Are Not My Child (novel)

The Modern Novel

The world-wide literary novel from early 20th Century onwards