Toni Cade Bambara

Toni Cade Bambara, originally named Miltona Mirkin Cade, was born in Harlem in New York City in 1939. She grew up in Harlem, Queens, and Brooklyn. As a child she changed her name to Toni, and later, in 1970, she added “Bambara” to her surname, referencing a West African ethnic group of the same name. Bambara studied theater and English at Queens College, earning her BA in 1959. That same year, she published her first short story, “Sweet Town,” which would later be included in her most well-known short story collection, Gorilla, My Love (1972). During the latter half of the 1960s, Bambara worked with City College of New York’s SEEK program which assists economically disadvantaged young people, particularly people of color, with attending and succeeding at college. In 1970 and 1971, Bambara compiled, edited, and published two collections of poetry, short fiction, and essays by a number of famous Black authors. She titled the collections The Black Woman (1970) and Tales and Stories for Black Folk (1971). Gorilla, My Love was published in 1972 and was edited by Toni Morrison, a contemporary of Bambara. Later in life, Bambara wrote and produced numerous screenplays, including The Bombing of Osage Avenue (1986), which depicted the 1985 Philadelphia police assault on the headquarters of the Black revolutionary community organization MOVE. Throughout her life, Bambara was politically active, and she visited the communist countries Cuba and Vietnam in an effort to learn about the lives of women who lived there. Bambara died of colon cancer in 1995.