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Toni Cade BambaraAfrican-American writer, documentary filmmaker, social activist
Date of Birth: 25.03.1939
Country:  USA |
Content:
Early Life and Education
Tony Cade Bambara was born in Harlem, New York, to Walter and Helen (Henderson) Cade. She grew up in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant (Brooklyn), Queens, and New Jersey. At age six, she changed her name from Milton to Tony, and later, in 1970, she added the West African ethnic name Bambara after she found it inscribed as part of a signature in a sketchbook discovered in a trunk of her great-grandmother's belongings. [1, 3, 4] She felt her new name represented "an accumulation of experiences" through which she had finally found her purpose in the world. In 1970, Bambara gave birth to her daughter, Karma Bene Bambara Smith, by her partner, Gene Lewis, an actor and family friend.
Bambara attended Queens College in 1954, where she was one of the few Black undergraduates. She initially planned to become a doctor, but her passion for the arts led her to study English. Having a passion for jazz and the arts in general, Bambara was part of Queens College's dance club. She also participated in theater, where she was a stage manager and costume designer. Bambara was among those involved in folk singing when it first emerged in the 1950s, with the songs carrying political messages. Bambara graduated from Queens College with a B.A. in Theater Arts/English Literature in 1959.
Career and Teaching
She later went on to study mime at the École de Mime Étienne Decroux in Paris, France. She then developed an interest in dance prior to earning her M.A. from the City College of New York in 1964 while working as a program director at Colony Settlement House in Brooklyn. She also worked in New York City social services and as the recreational director of the psychiatric ward at Metropolitan Hospital. From 1965 to 1969, she participated in City College's SEEK (Search for Education, Elevation, Knowledge) program and helped develop it. She taught English, published materials, and worked with SEEK's black theater group. Bambara was also the English tutor in the New Careers Program in Newark, New Jersey, in 1969.
In 1969, she became an Assistant Professor of English at the newly formed Livingston College of Rutgers University and remained until 1974. She was a visiting professor of African-American studies at Emory University and at Clark Atlanta University (1977), where she also taught in the School of Social Work (until 1979). Bambara was a resident playwright at the Neighborhood Arts Center (1975-79), Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri (1976), and Spelman College in Atlanta (1978-79). From 1986 onward, she taught feature film screenwriting at Louis Massiah's Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia. Bambara also lectured at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, where she gave literary readings.
Health Issues and Passing
In 1993, Bambara was diagnosed with colon cancer and passed away two years later in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Activism
Bambara worked in Black communities to raise awareness of issues such as feminism and Black consciousness. Having become part of City College's faculty, Bambara sought to make it more inclusive. To this end, she wanted to add more classes, such as a course in nutrition, to teach students more about their culture. Bambara also wanted to see the creation of an academy that would create an environment where students could be more actively engaged in exploring political and social issues in society as well as their culture. Bambara was involved in several community and activist groups, and her work was influenced by the Civil Rights and Black Nationalist movements of the 1960s. In the early to mid-1970s, she traveled to Cuba with Robert Cole, Hattie Gossett, Barbara Webb, and Suzanne Ross to study how women's political organizations operated there. She put this experience into practice in the late 1970s when she moved with her daughter, Karma Bene, to Atlanta, Georgia, where Bambara co-founded the Southern Collective of Black Women Writers.
Literary Career
Bambara was an active participant in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and the emergence of Black feminism. In her writing, she drew inspiration from New York City streets and culture, where she was influenced by her experiences learning from "Harlem Garveyites, Muslims, Pan-Africanists, and Communists to the backdrop of jazz music." Her anthology "The Black Woman" (1970), featuring poems, short stories, and essays by Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Paula Marshall, and herself, as well as the work of Bambara's students from the SEEK program, was the first feminist collection to focus on African American women. "Tales and Stories for Black Folks" (1971) included works by Langston Hughes, Ernest J. Gaines, Pearl Cleage, Alice Walker, and students. She wrote the introduction to another groundbreaking feminist anthology of color, "This Bridge Called My Back" (1981), edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga. Although Bambara is often referred to as a "feminist," in her essay entitled "On the Issue of Roles," she wrote: "Perhaps we need to drop all the concepts of masculinity and femininity and concentrate on Blackness."
Bambara's 1972 book "Gorilla, My Love" is a collection of 15 of her short stories written between 1960 and 1970. Most of these stories are told from a first-person perspective and are "written in a rhythmic urban black English." The narrator is often a sassy young girl, tough, brave, and caring, who "defies the role of the Black victim." Bambara termed her writing as "optimist" fiction. Among the stories included were "The Blues Ain't No Mockingbird," as well as "Raymond's Run" and "The Lesson." This collection of short stories reflected Bambara's own demeanor, which was described as "dramatic, often flamboyant, with a flair for genuine emotion."
Her novel "The Salt Eaters" (1980) focuses on an event of healing that coincides with a community festival in the fictional town of Claiborne, Georgia. In the novel, the characters use a combination of modern medical methods with traditional folk remedies and healers to help the protagonist, Velma, heal after a suicide attempt. Through the struggles of Velma and the other characters around her, Bambara addresses the deep psychological tolls that African American political and community organizers, particularly women, can endure. Bambara explores ideas of sickness and well-being in the Black community, urging action through her characters. "Velma (and, by extension, Black women) must reassert healthy relationships to one another that create and sustain pathways to wholeness and refocus the health of Black women within the
