Toni Cade Bambara, Empowering the Community that Names Her
© Dorothy Harris
Toni Cade Bambara(1939 - 1995) was a prolific fiction and non-fiction writer, film critic, scriptwriter and teacher whose work includes short story collections, Gorilla My Love , The Seabirds are Still Alive, the novel, The Salteaters, and The Black Woman, an anthology.
Bambara's writing is consistent in reflecting her intentional participation in the empowerment of her own community and it is consistent in giving the indisputable message that she received her own empowerment and education within her own community. Bambara's writing never neglects the wisdom she gained from her lifelong development and experiences in her community. In her essay entitled "The Education of a Storyteller," for example, Bambara discusses the ways in which she was trained by the older women in her community to understand some fundamental elements of theory, particularly for African Americans (Bambara, 1996). This essay focuses on a woman whom she calls grandmother or Grandma Dorothy (among many other terms of endearment) who gives Bambara lessons on storytelling and on critical theory when Bambara, as a thirteen year old, boasts of knowing Einstein's theory of relativity. While the young and intelligent Bambara is equipped to discuss her newly acquired textbook knowledge of Einstein's theory, her Grandma Dorothy was equipped to teach her a bit about the elements and functions of critical analysis that would have a significant influence on Bambara's work as an adult. By questioning Bambara on this new theory, Grandma Dorothy actively takes control of the lesson, and introduces the young Bambara to her own understanding of theory. Although it is apparent that Grandma Dorothy is not necessarily familiar with theoretical terminology, and that she is not a traditionally educated woman, it is apparent that the lesson she teaches Bambara becomes a foundation for higher levels of writing and thinking. Having used this for an example, Bambara writes
It was Grandma Dorothy who taught me critical theory, who steeped me in the tradition of Afrocentric aesthetic regulations, who trained me to understand that a story should be informed by the emancipatory impulse that characterizes our storytelling trade in these territories as exemplified by those freedom narratives which we've been trained to call slave narratives for reasons too obscene to mention... (Bambara, 249 - 250)
In other essays and interviews Bambara is careful to attribute the source of her knowledge and wisdoms to those who have influenced her, sometimes her community and sometimes these influences are not necessarily named. In discussions about her works, for instance, she indicates that her text is informed by a wisdom, implying an indefinable or supernatural other, and when asked about the meaning of some of her works, she states that she is still learning to interpret the meanings of her own works herself.
