The Writer as Cultural Worker (1982)

Interview with Toni Cade Bambara by Kay Bonetti

[Transcribed by Another World Archives]

The following is an interview with Toni Cade Bambara, conducted by Kay Bonetti for the American Audio Prose Library in February of 1982 at the author's home in Atlanta, Georgia. 

[Kay Bonetti]

I asked you to read the sort of preface, or a sort of preface, to Guerrilla My Love for probably rather transparent reasons because there are many issues, um, 

raised in a real lighthearted and comic fashion there that are actually pretty serious, aren't they- 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm 

[Kay Bonetti]

... about the question of the relationship between the writer and his work and the writer and life around him? First of all, do you really believe that there is such a thing as straight-up fiction? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Well, yeah. It depends on what you, on what genre you're working in. Um, in the essay form, one expects the writer to step forward and to, um, present things from the actual world, so to speak. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

In fiction, you, many writers make use of memory, will craft secondhand, third-hand hearsay, overheard experiences, um, or can deal strictly out of the head. I mean, just absolutely summon up, uh, characters that have no reference in, in that writer's world. Uh, for myself, I tend to leave real people alone. I'm very respectful of people's privacy. Characters, of course, are based on or something like, uh, people that I do know. For example, in the collection, the first collection, Guerrilla My Love, most of the children, who are generally the protagonists or even the narrator in many of the stories, are like particular kids that I knew. Tough, little compassionate kids that I love. I mean, I have tremendous respect for that kind of person. But there's no kid in particular. Um, the events that are made use of in the story's setting, places like that, are places that I've been to or maybe heard about. Or, or sometimes they're just landscapes completely out of the head, or may come from dream life. Um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

whenever the question is raised though, you know, at readings or work, in workshops, it always strikes me as off-center. It's not quite the question. The question isn't, you know, to what degree a work is autobiographical, but what do you do with, how do you transform, um, actual experiences you have been through? How do you transform people you have encountered 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

in order to make usable whatever lesson it is you've extracted from that experience that you want to lift up and share with other people? That then becomes a craft question. Although for me, it's still a moral question too, a question of etiquette. 

[Kay Bonetti]

There's such a trend now for the true-life novel, for para-journalism, for that sort of thing. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

[Kay Bonetti]

I take it that, uh, you do have strong feelings about the morality of such use of real people? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Yeah. For example, it would never occur to me to, um, impale my mother, you know, on a pin or to, uh, capture relatives in ink, you know, or, or 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

reduce friends to still life, which is essentially what happens, um, with writers who are a little careless, I think, about how they make use of people around them. Which is why so many people, uh, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

are wary around writers. You never know to what extent you're being 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

used up. But the question really, um, has hit me a lot lately is I'm attempting to put it to some kind of perspective the- what has been happening in Atlanta, Georgia in these past two years vis-à-vis the, uh, children's murders. And the, um... We've gotten the media's story, or the media version. We've gotten the police version. But we've yet to get the domestic version or the community story. And in the new book, I'm trying to document what took place here in Atlanta in these past two years but from a fictional stance. And, uh, a lot of problems arise in the writing because of that, uh, contradictory pull of the documentary impulse and the fictional impulse. But the reason I'm, I'm creating characters, uh, so that I can get at the story is that the fictional characters allow me to pursue the various theories, for example, about the murders and allow me to, um, lift up the community voice without hustling anybody, without, uh, um, bringing on stage actual people and putting words in their mouths or attributing motives to them that they may not have had when they made certain kind of public statements. So the book is kind of a combination of public statement by public figures, you know, indicating what they have actually said. And then the fictional characters allow me, provide me with a point of entry into, into the community's story. But, uh, it's a very hairy problem. 

[Kay Bonetti]

In your own case, when you do work, is there a discernible source or a germ that you can identify? Like, is it a voice that comes to you? Does... 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm. Different stories have, have different sources. Um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

poets, for example, frequently hear a line, just a hip line, you know. Uh, and they make play with it, you know, chew on it all day or for a week.... and they really just like that line, and then they'll just build a whole poem around it just to give it a setting or just to- just to have an occasion for getting that line off. Some stories have, um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

for me, very clear memories in terms of source. For example, the title story from the second story collection, The Seabirds Are Still Alive, came out of anecdotes and tales and stories that people in Vietnam and Laos shared with me in the summer of '75 when I was visiting Southeast Asia. And, um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

there's a line, for example, that I think the narrator is really saying it, um, in a section where the little girl, uh, resists torture and resists the interrogation because she remembers that the old folks had tau- had taught her that that's the wonderful thing about revolution. You can amend past crimes and be human again. What you do mat- what you do or and don't do matters very much for- for the ancestors and for the current contemporary people and for the yet unborn children. And that line actually came from, um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

an old- old revolutionary that I interviewed in, uh, in, um, Hanoi. No, in, um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Nha Tranh Harbor somewhere. The title story of the first collection, Guerrilla My Love, which is about betrayal. It's about the careless way in which grown-ups violate 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

the contract between grown-ups and children. In the case of this story, um, an uncle promised a little girl that he would marry her when she grew up, and he was just teasing and playing, um, but she was quite serious. That story had its source in an event that occurred in New York, in Brooklyn, oh, about 1950-something. I had gone to a puppet show that the children were putting on. The children were all ready. They were ready with their puppets. Uh, a lot of the children were sitting in the front row. They were all ready to begin, but the adult coordinator of the program kept looking at her watch and saying, "We'll wait a few more minutes for the people to get here." And, uh, this kind of bewildered the children who thought they were people and thought they were important enough to, uh, to start their own program. And that started me thinking, you know, how- how often, uh, we do that, that kind of, uh, nonchalant little murder that we commit, uh, simply because kids are kids and their little one can't take us to court. 

[Kay Bonetti]

In what sense could, um, Minnie Ransom in the, um, Salt Eaters be seen as an artist figure, as a creator figure? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm. Well, Minnie Ransom, of course, was a healer. Um, and I see no particular difference, at least in my mind and in my work, between me- the medical arts, the martial arts, and what they call the lively arts. I don't know of anything livelier than, uh, the martial arts, quite frankly. That is to say, in terms of life and death. Um, she's a healer, and to that extent, she's like a poet, uh, 'cause poets are community health workers. I mean, it is their job to call people to something higher than a fish sandwich and a job. And certainly poets in- in my own cultural traditions have been regarded as priests and therapists and- and healers. I mean, I think to that extent, Minnie Ransom might be regarded as an artist or an artist figure. But she is what she is. She's a healer. You know? She's just this crazy old swamp hag down there in Claiborne, Georgia, trying to, uh, find out from her patients if they are really serious about being whole and about being healthy 'cause it's quite a responsibility. 

[Kay Bonetti]

But she's also an orderer of chaos in a spiritual and a- a mind sense, and in terms of at least the way you've come to write in The Salt Eaters, which is 

[Kay Bonetti]

different from the more direct, upfront voice of Guerrilla My Love. Uh, she... [sighs] 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Yeah. 

[Kay Bonetti]

It's as though we're working in a universe here of- of sound, of- of- of form- 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm 

[Kay Bonetti]

... of some sort, of intellectual, I'm not sure, spiritual, intellectual, psychological form that manifests itself in various ways, in auras, in essences, in odors, and also in voices. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm. 

[Kay Bonetti]

And that that's part of what she's able to do as a healer is pull in, focus 

[Kay Bonetti]

on whatever it is that- 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm 

[Kay Bonetti]

... I guess you would call the subject, in this case, Velma's, given off, and order it. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Yeah, all the characters in Salt Eaters are part of that metaphor. Um, the masseuse, the pottery, the person doing the pottery, um, the martial arts people, the political theorists, the medicine people are all part of that, um, ordering impulse. I mean, lots of other people, you know, are compelled to create order, um, you know, to override all that seeming chaotic, contradictory, uh, contrary stuff that we have to, uh, negotiate with every day. I think it's no less for an artist than it is for a political theorist or- or for a medical, you know, a medical arts person or a mama, you know, or anybody else. 

[Kay Bonetti]

I guess I was thinking too of terms of the kind of writer you- you describe yourself as being in the way you're using the words straight up fiction, the phrase straight up fiction- 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm 

[Kay Bonetti]

... is that school of artists that perhaps sees themselves as a medium. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm. I think that accounts for what you put your finger on a little while ago, the- the shift in voice or the very different kind of voice.... that we hear or are aware of in The Salt Eaters, the novel, as opposed to some of the short stories and Girl of My Love. I'm trying to get at... I was trying to get at but didn't quite pull it off, like, a new kind of narrator in fiction. We've had the narrator as witness, the narrator as observer, the narrator as, um, participant. I'm after the narrator as medium. The narrator who, um, does not claim omniscience in that arrogant way. Arrogant and immoral way that, uh, is characteristic of, um, American letters, particularly Euro-American letters. But the narrator as medium is a person or a force that is simply there 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

as a kind of magnet, and through that narrator, other people tell their stories and lay them out. I think that comes closer to... That kind of narrator stance, or narrative stance, I think comes closer to, um, the position the griot has in, um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

both the international African community as well as other Third World communities. Um, where you're... It's not that you step back or that you oversee or you get in the middle of, but you're ju- you're just simply there. And, uh, it's through your presence that other people can, can now deliver up their stories and their lessons. It's rough. I'm still working at it. [clears throat] 

[Kay Bonetti]

Do you have an ideal audience of the first choice when you're writing? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

My first audience is really the people, [clears throat] the characters that are summoned up, um, in order to get whatever it is told. Once in a while, if you can get a nod from one of those characters, uh, a little wink, uh, then everything is fine. You go right on. Because the first relationship that has to be dealt with is the relationship between you and the work. And once that's straight and honest, then the rest of it's really gravy. The most... The audience that gives me the most feedback tend to be, um, folks I run across in the washhouse, um, or on the bus, or on the train, or just sort of traveling around. People who write little letters, usually on the back of something. Um, and I think that's because their response is, is, uh... It's straight. Um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

it's not a presentational, kind of, kind of... It's not a review, it's not a critique, it's not professional. It's just a straight-up gut response. I've had people stop me in the street and say, "Look, I just read, you know, something, something, and I wanna pick a bone with you about that because I don't think that's how it happens. And not only that, but you left out this, and, and what about so-and-so?" Or, um, people who stop me and just sort of grab me by the shoulders and kiss me on the cheek and say, "I really like the way... You really did justice to, uh, to that farmer or that beauty parlor lady, 'cause nobody writes about those people and I'm glad you did that." Bah, dah, dah, lah. That kind of feedback, uh, that kind of audience, I think is, is my best audience. So the problem then it faces, faces me, it faces any artist, is how do you [smacks lips] do a little Breer Rabbit thing in terms of getting to that audience with this whole intricate, elaborate mechanism of printing and publishing and promo and critiques and reviews that get between you 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

and the audience that validates you, that credits you. And for me, that's the community that names me. Which is not to say that, uh, reviews and, and, uh, professional critiques aren't important and aren't usable, but it's finally the community that, that, um... They calls you sister, calls you daughter, calls you mama, that can either make or break you, because it's only that group that... I mean, that's the group I'm serving, you know? So if that's not, uh... If that audience is not reached and does not find anything usable, there's almost no point in, uh, in doing it. 

[Kay Bonetti]

Well, I have been intrigued in the last few years with, um, certain, um, issues and j- questions, just the whole awareness of such a thing as Third World concerns, Third World literature, the function of the artist in this kind of world. To what extent do you see being Black in America as being part of the entire Third World? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

I identify internationally. 

[Kay Bonetti]

Mm-hmm. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

That is to say, um, the rest of my family is on the continent of Africa, is here, particularly in the South, is in the Caribbean, uh, in Brazil, particularly in Bahia. Um, the African family is worldwide. And to that extent, um, I tend to have an international perspective, 'cause I'm concerned about everything that happens to the family. In terms of, uh, other communities of color, both nationally and internationally, particularly as it gives rise to a group like the Seven Sisters and the novel The Salt Eaters, one of the calls that I'm trying to make in that book, among other things, is, um, coalition. I do identify with Black Americas very, very strongly. Uh, that's my base. But the home base is still continent, still the continent, in which case, the world, the world. I'm concerned particularly with any, any mem- any member group or family within the, the world of color that is attempting to... Attempting to what? Attempting to, um, earn its right to create history again by, um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

having control, economic, political, social, spiritual, aesthetic control of their own country again.

[Kay Bonetti]

What to you is the function of the artist 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

The art... yeah. The task of the artist is always determined by the status 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

and process 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

and agenda of the community that artist serves. If you're an artist, um, who identifies with, who springs from, who is serviced by 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

or drafted by, um, say a bourgeois capitalist class, then that's the kind of writing you do. And your job is to maintain status quo, to celebrate exploitation, uh, or to guise it in some, in some lovely, romantic way. That's your job. If you are a writer in Cuba, post-revolutionary Cuba, your job is to celebra- celebrate the triumph of the national will. If you're a writer coming out of Kenya, uh, the post-independent era in Kenya, your job is really to critique, uh, the failure of class struggle in Kenya and to tell the truth and to try to envision, to share a vision of what that society should be like if they're gonna really, um, liberate itself. As a cultural worker who belongs to an oppressed people, my job is to make revolution irresistible. And one of the ways I attempt to do that is by celebrating those victories within the Black community. Uh, and I think the mere fact that we're still breathing, uh, is a cause for celebration. And to critique reaction- reactionary behavior within the community 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

and to, um, keep certain kinds of calls out there. The children, our responsibility to children, um, our responsibility to maintain a certain con- continuity from the past. But I think in any, any artist, your job is determined by the community you identify with. But in this country, [clears throat] we're not encouraged and equipped at any particular time to view things that way. And so, um, the artwork or the art practice that sells that capitalist ideology is considered art, and anything that deviates from that then is considered political propagandist, polemical or, you know, didactic, strange, weird, subversive, or ugly. 

[Kay Bonetti]

Would you be comfortable being called something of a utopian writer? Being seen in that- 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Oh, absolutely not 

[Kay Bonetti]

... tradition? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

No, I don't identify with the utopian literature tradition. Um, there's several features 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

of that kind of literature. One, it takes a satiric stance about the current society. I'm not so much satiric. I'm critical, but not satiric. Um, for satire, you need a certain kinda sneering, um, temperament, and that- that's a little removed, far removed from me. Another futu- feature of the utopian literature is that, um, it presents a vision based on the assumption 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

that the reader and writer share a common set of values. I do not identify with the values of most utopian literature. I mean, it's- this simply, um, it does not speak to the world as I know it. It certainly does not speak to the international, uh, scheme of things. Another feature of utopian literature is that it doesn't l- it doesn't, um, look at process. It doesn't attempt to look at this new society in terms of as part of a historical continuum. And I found that a little, a little stupid. Um, and finally, its feature, its fin- its most characteristic feature is that it's very futuristic-looking. Um, I am also future, future-oriented, but it has to do with memory. It has to do with what I know 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

is possible because it, it already happened. Or, you know, people 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

need not be corrupted and perverted because I know in the past that people were not. So that my glance is both a back glance as w- as well as a flash forw- as a flash forward. No, I don't, I wouldn't identify myself as a utopian writer. When I look at my work, you know, with any little distance, the two 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

characteristics that, that jump out at me is, one, the tremendous capacity for laughter, but also a tremendous capacity for rage. And the rage is usually about the almost gratuitous injustices that people have to deal with. I think particularly of what, what happened in here in this country in the '50s, the part of that Cold War ideology in which, um, there was a relentless drive toward cultural conformity. Um, if all communities in this country, and we ha- and there are at least 32 distinguished and, distinguished and distinct, uh, cultures in this country, if they could all just forget 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

everything, just sort of embrace collective amnesia and instead embrace this mediocre, uh, bleached-out, kinesthetically impoverished thing called popular culture that was being systematically fashioned so that, uh, big business can get at us better through entertainment and spectacle, uh, I just despair when I consider how quickly 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

people gave up the best of themselves. So that by the time you hit the early '60s, there was no particularity anymore about, um... I'm exaggerating tremendously, but 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

a tremendous, uh, co-option of vibrant cultures by the whole commodity structure in, um...... in this country. You asked me earlier about sources with stories. That story, Broken Field Running, came about, um... I was doing an essay on environmental design, particularly urban design and architecture. And noticing the way in which kitchens, you know, got legislated out of existence, which meant if kitchens were the, you know, the headquarters of the elders, if you no longer had kitchens, then you couldn't, you didn't have your elders in your house anymore. Or, um, benches were removed from in front of, uh, low-income projects. Well, if you don't have benches, then you don't have a place for, you know, Mom and Pop Johnson to sit down or the old guys to play cards or dominoes and drink beer and keep surveillance of the turf and have some sense of community sovereignty because they're out there. Um, you know, the first group to go were then the elders. You put them in old age homes and forgot about them and you cut off a very, your critical tie with the past. 

[Kay Bonetti]

To me, the most central thing that I see in your work is, is the whole subject of children, or children as characters, children as narrators, children as protagonists, which is rather unusual actually- 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm 

[Kay Bonetti]

... in Western literature, I think. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

I don't know what to make of, of that. [clears throat] I mean, I don't have anything, you know, u- usable to say about the presence of children in my work. As a matter of fact, a lot of people called, um, after reading The Salt Eaters- 

[Kay Bonetti]

Mm 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

... once or twice to say, um,, "I observed that there's not many children running around in that story. Why is that?" Well, I hadn't been aware of it 'cause I'm not aware, you know, that children are so central in other stories, except in that first collection. But, um, it is rather unusual. I've noticed that 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

most writers, I'm thinking about writers like Walter Dean Myers, um, because his focus is on juveniles, his work tends to be put in the juvenile market. And adult readers somehow don't realize that's fine literature, you know? They just sort of sh- shuttle him off somewhere in a corner. Or, um, other people who write about children, if it, if they don't get stuck in the juvenile market or children's books, regardless of the fact that the book might be an adult book, it's always compared to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield, as though there were no other traditions of, uh, of, um, children, you know, as protagonists, as heroes. 

[Kay Bonetti]

Your protagonist in, uh, Broken Field Running says, "We blind our children, I am thinking, blind them to their potential, the human potential, cripple them, dispirit them. Cripples make good clients, wards, beggars, victims." 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

What always, I don't know, just brings me to my knees about the schools is the degree to which we, uh, appeal to the worst in children, I think. I see four kind of models in education. One that 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

starts with the premise that children are public enemy number one, that they're an absolute menace to life and limb and they must be defused and made obedient and robotized. And so we get the schools that, um, [clicks tongue] appeal to shame and guilt, where, uh, the motto seems to be, "You oughta be ashamed of yourself." Uh, and so the children come out obedient, true believers, and can be delivered up to the first demagogue that comes along because th- they're not encouraged and equipped to think critically or to voice opinions, to raise questions. Then you have a kind of school that starts with the premise that, uh, children are innocent, that is to say, stupid and, uh, immoral illiterates. And they must be protected from certain kind of information, and so you lie to them. Um, parents might say, um, uh, "Don't be afraid to go to the dentist. The dentist won't hurt you," instead of telling the kid, you know, what is likely to happen at a dentist so the kid can, you know, mobilize his or her own resources for the situation. But in those schools that start with, you know, "Protect the kid. Don't tell him anything," um, you do get, you get more illiterates, you get kids who don't know how to process information, who don't know how to think critically, uh, who can't think better than they've been taught. And so who wind up, you know, kind of bumbling around, being innocent. Then you get a, a, a kind of school that started, um, I guess in the '60s, so-called progressive schools, so-called, um, alternative schools, that start with a good premise. They start with the assumption that, um, the society does not free up children but oppresses them. So far, so good. And they are about freeing up the children, you know, not stifling creative expression. So far, so good. But most of those schools never had any sense of social theory of, uh, well, what do you train children for? You know, do you have any vision of what a good society is? In which case, you train your child to further, to bring that along. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

So most of those so-called alternative schools, you get kids running around on top of the tables, throwing food all over the floor. And, um, you get teachers who are permissive mainly because they ha- they will, they are scared. They will not take responsibility for setting standards, you know? And then you go to the meetings and, um, the group leader is saying, is laying out earth-shaking questions like, "If a child is sitting there masturbating in front of the class, in the front row, um, how do you handle this? I mean, should you..." And they go into this long, intricate, convoluted, you know, whatever about the kid was picking his nose or whatever this kid is doing. And then one, maybe one teacher can break through and say, "I would say, 'Hey, sweetheart, stop picking your nose. Stop playing with yourself.'" And then we'd get on with the lesson. But finally, there's a fourth [clears throat] model in this sch- in the, uh, country.... that I'm sure it exists, I hope it exists in other communities, but it certainly exists at the Pan-African Free Schools in the Black community. They start with the premise that children are responsible, competent, efficient, and principled. In which case, in those schools, uh, kids are encouraged to raise questions, they're encouraged to take on responsibility, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

they're encouraged to, to critique everything they read, everything they see. They don't just sit passively and watch television. They try to dialogue with the sensibility behind a commercial, with the sensibility behind Goldilocks and the Three Bears, or with, um, the sensibility behind a movie. But for the most part, that, those are, tho- that kind of school is, um, few and far between. For the most part, we just, uh, cripple the kids. 

[Kay Bonetti]

I'm also very [clears throat] interested in your metaphor on the salt eaters itself. Um, the salt eaters appears again in that story, Broken Field Running. In there, it's a metaphor of- of- of history gone wrong. And it's 

[Kay Bonetti]

sort of implicitly given a different treatment in the novel, The Salt Eaters. And I'm- I'm just- 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Okay. 

[Kay Bonetti]

I'm curious about this. I wonder if you'd explain to our listeners- 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Yeah 

[Kay Bonetti]

... the- the metaphor of the salt eaters as you see it. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Yeah. 

[Kay Bonetti]

What- 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

In the novel, it's more of a dialectic. There were- 

[Kay Bonetti]

Okay. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

There were times when we're given the 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

positive savor, the savor of salt. And other times, the, uh, debilitating, um, character of salt. But it finally all goes back to the African flying myth 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

that, um, that used to be very much present in some of the old anthems and- and Baptist songs, particularly in songs about Ezekiel seeing the wheel. And, um, some writers have- have attempted to make use of that myth. Toni Morrison certainly, in Song of Solomon, and Gayl Jones in a one-act play she did called The Ancestor. But as the old folks tell it, um, we got grounded because we ate too much salt. But as some of the old folks say, we got grounded because we 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

opened ourselves up to horror, to certain kinds of horror. We invited it onto the continent. And then that created tears, occasion for tears. And it was that salt that finally drowned our wings and made us, um, earthbound. In the novel, The Salt Eaters, there's a section 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

in which we look at the infirmary, the Southwest Community Infirmary, and at the Old Tree. And I had taken a line, I had removed a line from the manuscript before it went to press because I assumed that it was part of everyone's [laughs] knowledge. Uh, but I had to put it back in, 'cause people let me know that I was out of my mind. Uh, let me just read that section. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

"They passed the infirmary where the woods began and there was Old Tree, where many ransomed the healer, daily placed pots of food and jugs of water for the Loa, the laws alive, the spirits that resided there. Old Tree that the free coloreds of Claiborne had planted in the spring of 1871. The elders in coarse white robes gathering around the hole with digging sticks, the sun in their eyes. They planted the young sapling as a gift to the generations to come, and as a marker in case the infirmary could not be defended and would not hold. Old Tree, its roots fed by the mulch and compost and hope that children gathered from the district's farms, nurtured further by the Loa, called up in exacting ceremonies under the gaze of the elders, till they buzzed in the bark, permanent residents, waiting. The saplings shooting up past the iron and wire and string armature those first few springs, till the roots took hold and anchored and the spinal column straightened to tower upward from earth to sky, from soil to rain clouds. Even when the building had been raided and burnt to the ground and salted over, as Rome did Carthage so long ago when they finally conquered Hannibal, salted it over, but still we rise. Old Tree." The, um, the other thing that the elders say about eating salt and they, making reference to Hannibal and his elephants was that, um, even though that whole society was supposedly wiped out and razed to the ground and the earth salted over so nothing else could grow, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

that community, those people did rise again. So we always have this image of people eating through the salt, uh, in order to, um, fly again. So I'm kinda turning the thing completely around on its head. So by the time you get to the end of the book- 

[Kay Bonetti]

Right 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

... the salt, the various salt myths and- and 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

the various aspects of the African flying myth that have to do with salt have made a complete revolution. Yeah. 

[Kay Bonetti]

Oh. I see. To what extent, in fact, is printed literature fiction now? Do you think 

[Kay Bonetti]

reaching the, uh, audience, which by implication I would say from reading you that you would wish it to be reaching? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

It's difficult. Um, which is why within the small press community in particular, and I'm thinking of chat books and, you know, $2 paperbacks in particular, uh, why many of us have had to do, you know, very creative things in terms of reaching that audience. Um, book fairs, um-... readings. Not only readings on campuses, but readings in barbershops, bookstores, uh, on the corner, in churches, in basements, library auditoriums, pool halls. Um, that's certainly one way. I don't... I'm not all that 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

committed to print, however. I don't... I think it's just one small vehicle that has some potential. I'm more inclined to think that that particular audience that I consider my prime audience, that, um, the best way to- to reach would be through film. And I don't- I don't mean Hollywood film, but through independent, um, films which certainly are being produced in this time, uh, in this country and throughout the world, particularly third world, so-called third world. But the problem there is a distribution network. How do you, um, bypass Hollywood distributors and either four-wall your films or create a network among churches and library auditoriums and barbershops and beauty parlors and, and reach the people that you're really working for? It just cre- It just means that there's a lot of work beside the writing. A lot of writers, particularly, I'm thinking about workshops I've been conducting lately, a lot of developing writers think that, you know, once you've gotten the manuscript polished and edited that you're through. You send it out, you know, and it gets published, it's just through. No, it's not through. That's just step one. In fact, that's the easiest part, probably. The hardest part, that's the... what requires the work and the imagination and energy and stamina and endurance, is, as they say, doing that little Brer Rabbit number, getting past booksellers that who don't want your books and getting past, um, publishing companies who bury your book or shred it, uh, getting past, um, that whole promotional salesman network, and to actually reach an audience. It just requires a lot of footwork, but I think it's possible. I mean, you, you can... One can do it, you know? It just takes a lot of energy. But, um... And I don't think it's nece- I don't think books are in competition with TV or in competition with films. I think it's just another way to experience certain things. 

[Kay Bonetti]

What has been your history in terms of publishing? You mentioned that you're out of the small press tradition. I suppose that's probably true, although of almost any writer... 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Now that I think about it, I have published very little, actually, in small press journals, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

um, for reasons I don't quite... I can't fathom at the moment. I guess, perhaps, it's because I've been very lucky in terms of major publishing, uh, ventures, in the sense I've gotten a lot of stories in, um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

school readers put out by, f- you know, fairly major... Well, they are major, major publishing houses. And the books have been taken very quickly, uh, gotten contracts on those very quickly without, you know, too much sweat and jumping up and down, foaming at the mouth. Uh, and it's only now and then that I might, uh, send a story out to a small press. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

And I think it has to do with timing, 'cause it will tie up your work, you know, for years and years, since there's such a backlog of stuff they have to read. And, and most, uh, small press journals are out-of-pocket, one-woman or one-man shows, so it's very difficult to get... for them to get out the work. I began publishing in the '50s when I was still in college, um, at a time when I was not taking writing particularly seriously, maybe because it was so joyous a thing. I didn't think of it as serious work. I mean, if you're not... If I'm not scrubbing, you know, socks on a laundry board, uh, bleeding, bleeding knuckles, I don't, I don't think it's work. Um, in 1964, though, is, is what I... I usually read this in reviews, so I guess, um, they must be right, because they do their h- their homework better than I do. '64 is usually the date most people pinpoint. I got a story in, um, Negro Digest, and that same month there was a story in Massachusetts Review. And since that time, the publishing has been fairly steady. I was the, uh, book reviewer, the regular book reviewer for Liberator Magazine from '66 to, to its demise in '72. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

And, um, the first collection, Guerrilla, those stories... That book came out in '72, but those stories date from 1955 to '72, and the majority of them had been published before. Um, I don't have any big quarrel about publishing. Um, it's only been in the last few years that I've gotten very serious about writing. That is to say, writing's gotten very serious with me, and it has become a- a more and more a central activity in my life. I'd always thought of myself as a m- teacher who writes, a social worker who writes, a youth worker who writes, a mother who writes. Now I'm a writer. And, uh, I think in the next few years, I may experience some difficulty in publishing bec- simply because I'm put... I'm... The output is, um... is so much more in terms of volume than in past years. But, um, I've just been lucky. I grew up in New York. I grew up with people who were interested in books. They eventually went into publishing, became copy editors or editors or journalists or something. Um, and since I was right there in New York, I couldn't miss. Now that I'm in Atlanta, however [laughs] 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

um, I think it might get a little hairy as, as time goes on. 

[Kay Bonetti]

What role does an editor play for a writer once you are more or less established, or at least you have published one or two books? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm. 

[Kay Bonetti]

You've mentioned that Toni Morrison is your editor at Random House. Now, how does this work? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm. 

[Kay Bonetti]

Are there demands put on you now that you've written The Salt Eaters to have another novel ready to go within a certain length of time or anything like that? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Yeah, the writer and the editor, there, there are at least 50 different kinds of relationships you can establish. Um...The one that I tend to establish, being who I am, is leave me alone. Uh, I write at my own pace. I write only what I wanna do, um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

or what I'm compelled to do. And, uh, you know, I just sorta take it easy. Once in a while... The- there was a lot of discussion about, um, why are you a short story writer exclusively, when the whole market is geared up for a novel. The critics are geared up for a novel. The reviewers are geared up for the novel. Teachers are geared up for the novel. It's sort of a kind of suicide, professional suicide. But since I don't think of writing as a career, um, it's simply one of the ways I do my work in the world, I never paid it too much attention until I discovered that the short story I was writing was getting longer and longer, and it looked like it was gonna be a novel. And I got a lot of support, uh, from Toni Morrison, my editor, about doing it. But the relationship that we have, which I think is ideal for me, but probably would not work with other editors or with other writers, is that she generally leaves me alone. You know, once in a while, she'll call and say how you're do- Well, we, we talk to each other because we're friends, um, and because we're v- very much interested in each other's work as women, uh, and as members of the same community. Uh, once in a while, she may probe to find out what I'm doing. And I might send her, uh, something, and then we talk contract for a minute, and the contract is done. And when I hand in a copy, she usually, uh, reads it herself, makes some comments. She might make a few suggestions, which I take or not take, and then she turns it over to her copy editors. And she trains the best in the business. Any copy editor that has worked under her knows what they're doing. When they leave her, they can become an editor immediately. Then the copy editors go over it, and they catch things like I may have changed someone's age, or if- if this is the date and you have the wrong movie playing at the movie house, or you've changed the spelling. You know, they might catch things like that. But for the most part, it's a very non-interference kind of, uh, kind of, uh, activity on her part for which I'm very grateful. 

[Kay Bonetti]

Just now, you said, "Writing is just one of those things that I have, uh, that is a part of my work in this world." And we've talked about the difficulties in, in books as a way for, as a means of being that part of your work in the world. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm. 

[Kay Bonetti]

And so I guess the question that would follow is, why do you write? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

I'm compelled to write. Um, it's my meditation. I mean, some people, you know, have mantras. Other people, um, go to therapists. You know, different people have different ways to maintain certain kind of balance or sanity. I write because I must. If I didn't, I'd be walking around grumbling and probably be homicidal in a matter of, you know, two weeks. I write because I really think I've got hold of something that if I share it, um, might save somebody else some time, um, m- might lift someone's spirits, or might enable someone to see more clearly and not be... you're not, you know, go for the okey-doke. Um, but I do not write because it's a career or it's a profession, or, or because, um, the publishing industry exists. You know? If there were no more presses and no more publishing houses, I would still be writing. I would be writing... You know, there might be journals, or I might write to- for readings, but I would certainly still be writing. 

[Kay Bonetti]

As you were reading, I was following, uh, in my copy of The Sea Birds Are Alive, the story that you just read, The Organizer's Wife. And you were reading a very different- 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm 

[Kay Bonetti]

... set of words. Now, what does this tell me about, um, how you work? Do you revise continually nonstop? Is this- 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Oh, no. Usually, when I'm through, I'm through. I'm more, much more interested in whatever I'm working on at the moment. But I'm very aware that what is available to the eye is not always available to the ear. Um, listening, the listening experience and the listening discipline is extremely different from the reading experience and the reading discipline. Um, for example, when you're reading, the pronoun him may not throw you because you know that five lines earlier you read the name. But in listening, you need to hear that name. So I'll put it in. Also, the rhythm of the eye is not the same as the rhythm of the ear. So I tend to revise a lot when I'm reading. I mean, I have reading versions of stories and written versions of stories. Uh, sometimes it's also, um, editing that, uh... I mean, suddenly I'm reading and I realize, "Oh, that doesn't make any sense. I better straighten that up, clean that up." Or I think of a better way to say it. But generally, once the work is done, I'm through. Um, I write for the ear. My, my works are certainly very rhythmic and musical. And I mean, I come out of the musical tradition. Um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

but I'm aware that there... it's print. I'm very much aware of that when I'm writing. I'm very much aware of that when I'm editing. When I'm reading, um, I try to make the work a little more performable. Although some works I've certainly read with performance in mind. For example, in the Sea Birds Are Still Alive collection is a story called Medley. And it's very much written like that, a medley. And it's written with particular actresses in mind who like to perform my work. Now, Ruby Dee, when she first got hold of the book, immediately assumed that two stories in there were hers. Witch Bird, because it's about an actress singer and a older woman, so she loved that. And, uh, Medley because it, uh, just appealed to her in terms of the rhythms and the, the quality of person. It was the person, I think, that grabbed her. But I was very aware of writing it as a performable piece. And it, it, um... it works better hearing than reading, than sitting down, looking at it. And as a result, Ruby took it and, um, it became, um, a one-woman show.

[Kay Bonetti]

You said a while ago that, uh, writing was simply a part of the work that you did in this world, and indeed, you've- we know of several things that you do. You teach and you, uh, 

[Kay Bonetti]

you're a mother and you, you work with various 

[Kay Bonetti]

organizations, have been a social worker. Like, what part of your life does writing take in terms of your routine? Do you set a time aside or grab it as you can get it or... 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm. There was a time when it was catch-as-catch-can. But the wonderful thing about writing a short story is that you can... it's portable. You can walk around with it in your head. You can, um, conjure up characters while the clothes are spinning. You can practice dialogue while you turn the- flip the pancakes. And only, you know, even scrib- you know, scribble little things on pieces of paper and stick 'em in the mirrors and under the, you know, under the toothpaste glass or something. And then when you get around to it, if you find, you know, a vacation turns up, you're at home, the kid maybe is away, then you write the story. But with a novel, a whole... a whole time management question came into being, 'cause short stories are just a piece of work, but the writing the novel is a way of life. So in recent years, I would say the last two or three years, writing has become far more central in my life. I organize other things around it. I write whenever I feel like it. I have no particular routine. Some days, um, I just incubate ideas that might go on for two or three days. I'm normally working on about 10 or 15 stories at a time. I may draft something or just do a little scribbling. I usually have one big project that, um, that I'm obsessive about and I'm subject to disappear from all known postal zones on planet Earth to get it done. With screen scripts, particularly, I'm... I tend to just sign myself into a, uh, hotel for a few days with one of those Cadillac typewriters and just, uh, you know, work. But that, um, is not so good, 'cause I like being at home and I like answering the phone and talking to people and cooking and fooling around. But, um, now since I've been unemployed for seven years 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

and only do, uh, consultant work or I might put a little program together and work for two or three weeks and then turn it over to somebody else, I'm now freed up for the first time in my life to actually do some serious writing. 

[Kay Bonetti]

Why Atlanta? Why have you chosen to live here? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

It's It's gonna be- 

[Kay Bonetti]

You were born and raised in New York City. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm. My people are from Atlanta. My mama's folks are from Atlanta. My daddy's folks are from Savannah. I've always been very at home at the S- in the South. Atlanta has a fast airport. I can get out of here. I can get to New Orleans and, um, you know, eat my way across the district. Um, I like Atlanta. One of the things I like about Atlanta, old folks are very accessible here. Um, I think at least 60% of the population are elders. And that suits me fine. I like that. 

[Kay Bonetti]

What kind of people did you come from? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

We've always been working class people. My mama was a domestic for most of her life, even after her two degrees, and then went into, uh, civil service, and for the most part, always maintained her ties with younger people. She's a- she's what I would call, um, a manager of intellectual resources. She's very good- she's very good at, uh, spotting people 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

and pulling out their potential. Uh, back in the days before we had gr- uh, guidance counselors and career counselors, my mother was the kind of person who watched you and then came up at you and said, "What is your plan? What do you think you're going to do in life?" And people would just deliver it up and she would- she would assist them. My daddy was a, um, a runaway. He came from a long line of runaways, um, men who left their family homestead to take to the road either as musicians or tinkers or carpenters or whatever. And he came to the big city and, um, lived in the bachelor societies that existed in those days in Harlem, mostly railroad porters and shoe shine, uh, dudes and musicians. And, um, I get various kinds of things from both sides of the family. My mother used to take us to Speaker's Corner, 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, where we would listen to trade unionists, um, discussing race affairs. And my father used to take us to the Apollo, uh, where we learned the tremendously high standards our community has for verbal performance as well as musical performance. And it was through both of them that, uh, I began to appreciate the power of the word. 

[Kay Bonetti]

It's implicit, to me anyway, in everything you said that, uh, as far as you're concerned, you see yourself as a Black writer and Black American, by extension all the world. So I take it by that that you're comfortable with the idea of a distinct Black literature or...? 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

There is a distinct Black literature. Mm-hmm. With very particular kind of traditions. I was just thinking about that the other day. Um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

we were trying to find a copy of, um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes. And, um, I was talking to Eleanor, whom I mentioned earlier, and she was saying, "Do you realize this is the first boy..." I think the novel was written back in the '40s. "First American boy who comes from a tradition." Now, Huck Finn, of course, is fleeing Pap. I mean, he is lighting out. You know, he's something to run from. And of course, had Mark Twain had a little more courage, um, Nigger Jim would've been more of the father figure that he obviously is than that sort of mammy figure that, uh, is part of the other tradition Twain has to deal with. But, um...So just that one little aspect is- is- is a very d- is a very distinct tradition as opposed to your American literature, which is fairly- which is European to me. That is to say 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

the literature 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

in this country that confronts what is particular and peculiar about this country is Black literature. Everything that happens in Hemingway could happen in Europe. Anything that happens in Henry James did happen in Europe. Anything that's Hawthorne or anybody's talking about could happen over there. And as Richard Wright said, if Poe and those guys were standing where he was standing, they would not have to invent horror. They would know it. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Black literature for me is the American literature. Now, since the, um, '60s that other communities have found their voice again, because there's certainly a long tradition of Asian American writing in this country, um, American literature has been thoroughly redefined in the last 10 years, quite as it's kept. The universities, of course, haven't, you know, recognized and acknowledged this fact because universities tend to be committed to dead things, you know, which is understandable. I mean, you can talk about Shakespeare. If he's dead, you know, anyth- any findings that you come to are not gonna be contradicted by a new Shakespeare work tomorrow. But it's a little harder to talk about contemporary work, and so they stick with the dead people. Um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

but now you have American literature, American experience, American language, American lore 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

being redefined 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

by writers coming out of the Laguna, Lakota, Rosebud Sioux, Hopi, Navajo, African, Caribbean, African African. You know, I mean, there's a lot of people in the country writing now. 

[Kay Bonetti]

You mentioned coalition earlier, but do you see a future in which it's possible to have a coalition not just of, say, people of color, but people of all colors and- 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

People of color and people of all colors. 

[Kay Bonetti]

Well, I mean, including white into the colors. [laughs] 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Oh. Um, I don't know. There are certainly... there certainly have been, uh, there's certainly a history of- of white-black coalitions or white-colored coalitions. Some of- most of which have ended in betrayal. I'm looking particularly at the- on the left. Um, there's no need to look on the right. Um, 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

but there's certainly coalitions that have been- 

[Kay Bonetti]

[laughs] 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

... that have maintained, um, um, credibility, um, over the years since the '30s in this country. And there's certainly coalitions that have been fashioned in the late '60s that are still operating now. 

[Kay Bonetti]

What about a coalition of readers? [laughs] 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

That'd be nice. That'd be interesting. 

[Kay Bonetti]

Well, thank you very much- 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Mm-hmm 

[Kay Bonetti]

... for talking to us. 

[Toni Cade Bambara]

Thank you. 

[Kay Bonetti]

[Instrumental music plays] Toni Cade Bambara's books include two collections of short stories: Guerrilla My Love and The Seabirds Are Still Alive, published in 1972 and 1977, and one novel, The Salt Eaters, published in 1980. These are all available through Random House. She's also the editor and a contributor to The Black Woman, published in 1970, and Tales and Stories for Black Folks, published in 1971. 

[Kay Bonetti]

For information about other writers in this series, write us, The American Audio Prose Library, 915 East Broadway, Columbia, Missouri, 65201. Funding for this project is provided by The National Endowment for the Arts, The Missouri Arts Council, and The Reback Memorial Foundation. Additional assistance is provided by KOPN Radio of Columbia, Missouri. [instrumental music plays]