Celebrating Toni Cade Bambara

April 12, 2008

New Anthology Celebrates Toni Cade Bambara

Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara
Linda Janet Holmes & Cheryl A. Wall, editors
Temple University Press ©2008

“I was fortunate…blessed to have Toni’s presence in my life at such a critical time in my life. In February 1990, at the very ripe age of 20, I shared my feelings of alienation, and inadequacy at Swarthmore College combined with my frustration with the racist and sexist Eurocentric film department at Temple University– things like watching and critiquing camera techniques, without any social commentary, of films like “Birth of A Nation” and “Imitation of Life with Toni.” After hearing my frustration and disappointment with my undergraduate studies at Temple University, Toni told me to come to a place called Scribe Video Center to take her scriptwriting workshop. I told Toni I didn’t have any additional money to take a scriptwriting workshop. Her response was “I didn’t ask you if you had any money, I told you to come to Scribe Video Center and take my scriptwriting workshop.” Toni’s response forever changed my life…” -Aishah Shahidah Simmons-

From 1990, when I was 21 years old, through 1995, I had the absolute privilege to know and learn from Toni Cade Bambara who was an award-winning author, screenwriter, organizer, activist, teacher. Her “hands on” influence on some of the most prominent writers and filmmakers spans two generations. Personally, were it not for Toni’s profound presence in my life at a critical period in my life, I don’t know if I would be a documentary filmmaker today. I wrote about my herstory with Toni and her pivotal role in my becoming a documentary filmmaker, in my featured essay “Asserting My In(ter)dependence: The Evolution of NO!”

As the editors the timeless and celebratory Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara, Linda Janet Holmes and Cheryl Wall have done a magnificent job of gathering a chorus of well known and lesser known diverse voices who sing a praise song for Toni Cade Bambara, one of the preeminent cultural workers.

BUY YOUR COPY OF “SAVORING THE SALT” TODAY!!!!

“Brilliance, courage and joy are what I knew of Toni Cade Bambara. Savoring the Salt mirrors her exhilarating intellect and the reach of her incomparable talents. Clearly, in these pages, the impact of her life and work—on family, friends, artists, students, colleagues—is as profound as it is forever”
—Toni Morrison

The extraordinary spirit of Toni Cade Bambara lives on in Savoring the Salt, a vibrant and appreciative recollection of the work and legacy of the multi-talented, African American writer, teacher, filmmaker, and activist. Among the contributors who remember Bambara, reflect on her work, and examine its meaning today are Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Pearl Cleage, Ruby Dee, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Nikki Giovanni, Avery Gordon, Audre Lorde, and Sonia Sanchez.

Admiring readers have kept Bambara’s fiction in print since her first collection of stories, Gorilla, My Love, was published in 1972. She continued to write-and her audience and reputation continued to grow-until her untimely death in 1995. Savoring the Salt includes excerpts from her published and unpublished writings, along with interviews and photos of Bambara. The mix of poets and scholars, novelists and critics, political activists, and filmmakers represented here testifies to the ongoing importance and enduring appeal of her work.

“This is a moving tribute to a seminal figure of American literature whose work continues to resonate.”
—Booklist

“Toni Cade Bambara is one of the great literary figures of the late 20th century. She deserves more serious attention and sustained scrutiny. This magnificent volume is a first step toward this necessary effort!”— Cornel West
“Toni Cade Bambara was a genius of language, an artist of connectedness, a lucid, inspired artisan of human freedom. This collection in many voices, hers threaded throughout, is a gift to her memory, a continuing rediscovery of her visionary work, and an important historical document.”
— Adrienne Rich

“Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka, Pearl Cleage and other African American luminaries remember the late writer and activist [Toni Cade Bambara]. What emerges is a portrait of a brilliant wordsmith and tireless revolutionary who 10 years after her death, is missed, says Cleage, ‘each and every day.’”
— “Ms.” Magazine

“The breadth of outstanding contributors to this collection is evidence of Toni Cade Bambara’s enormous influence on writers, filmmakers, scholars, and community activists. Bambara’s artistry, insight, and lived example create a directive for 21st century artists: Tap into the genius within, stay rooted in local communities, and use culture as a tool for progressive social change.”
— Louis Massiah

BUY YOUR COPY OF “SAVORING THE SALT” TODAY!!!!

About the Author(s)

Linda Janet Holmes is a writer, independent scholar, and activist. She is also co-author of Listen To Me Good: The Story of An Alabama Midwife.

Cheryl A. Wall is Professor of English at Rutgers University, and the author of Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition, and Women of the Harlem Renaissance. She is the editor of Zora Neale Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings and Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Blog, Reviews & Press 

Celebrating the life and legacy of Toni Cade Bambara in New York & Atlanta

March 20, 2008

Black Feminist Cultural Worker Extraordinaire


©2004, Susan J. Ross, photographer

“I start with the recognition that we are at war, and that war is not simply a hot debate between the capitalist camp and the socialist camp over which economic/political /social arrangement will have hegemony in the world. It’s not just the battle over turf and who has the right to utilize resources for whomsoever’s benefit. The war is also being fought over the truth: What is the truth about human nature, about the human potential? My responsibility to myself, my neighbors, my family and the human family is to try to tell the truth. That ain’t easy…We have rarely been encouraged and equipped to appreciate the fact that the truth works and it releases the Spirit and that it is a joyous thing. We live in a part of the world, for example, that equates criticism with assault, that equates social responsibility with naive idealism, that defines the unrelenting pursuit of knowledge and wisdom as fanaticism…“-Toni Cade Bambara-

During the week of March 24, 2008, there will be two major celebrations of the life and legacy of Toni Cade Bambara, internationally acclaimed, award-winning Black feminist mother, author, teacher, organizer, activist, filmmaker, cultural worker.

The first event will be held at the Brecht Forum, in New York City, on Tuesday, March 25, 2008, which is the 69th anniversary of her birth. Linda Janet Holmes and Cheryl A. Wall, editors of Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara, along with sister contributors Salamishah Tillet, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, and others who have had the opportunity to know Toni personally and/or through her work will read from and sign Savoring the Salt, which is a praisesong to one of the ultimate cultural workers who walked the talk of using one’s work to make (radically progressive, left of center) revolution irresistible.

This celebratory event will be held at 7:30pm. The Brecht Forum is located at 451 West Street (between Bank & Bethune Streets), New York, NY 10014. Their phone number is (212) 242-4201. For more information, please visit http://www.brechtforum.org/node/1514?bc=

“I was fortunate…blessed to have Toni’s presence in my life at such a critical time in my life. In February 1990, at the very ripe age of 20, I shared my feelings of alienation, and inadequacy at Swarthmore College combined with my frustration with the racist and sexist Eurocentric film department at Temple University– things like watching and critiquing camera techniques, without any social commentary, of films like “Birth of A Nation” and “Imitation of Life with Toni.” After hearing my frustration and disappointment with my undergraduate studies at Temple University, Toni told me to come to a place called Scribe Video Center to take her scriptwriting workshop. I told Toni I didn’t have any additional money to take a scriptwriting workshop. Her response was “I didn’t ask you if you had any money, I told you to come to Scribe Video Center and take my scriptwriting workshop.” Toni’s response forever changed my life…” -Aishah Shahidah Simmons-

Toni Cade Bambara Scholar-Activism Conference, Spelman College, 3.28- 3.29.08

 

©2004, Susan J. Ross, Photographer

“The second opportunity to celebrate Toni Cade Bambara’s life and legacy will be at Spelman College in Atlanta, GA where they will host the 8th annual Toni Cade Bambara Scholar-Activism Conference. The theme of this year’s conference is “Black Feminisms on Fire!!!” Pre conference activities begin on Thursday, March 28th at 11am. On Friday, March 29, 2008 at 6pm, there will be a Savoring the Salt reception, book reading and signing with editors Linda Janet Holmes, Cheryl A. Wall and contributors Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Rudolph Byrd, Sue Ross, Valerie Boyd, and Aishah Shahidah Simmons. On Saturday, March 30, 2008 there will be a morning plenary on Toni Cade Bambara followed by workshops on a myriad of topics including: reproductive rights and women’s health; images of women in the media and popular culture; black feminisms; women’s art and creativity; women’s global & transnational activism; gendered economics and other topics that inform our internal and external world

Co-founded by Dr. Bahati M. Kuumba, associate director of the Spelman College’s Womens Resource and Research Center, this conference is the culminating activity of the Toni Cade Bambara Writer/Scholar/Activist Program and Collective which sponsors an annual lecture and workshop series; a student collective; and an annual newsletter, Sisters of the Word.

For detailed information on this conference, please visit http://www.museum.spelman.edu/about_us/distinction/womenscenter/tonicadebambara.shtml

The two photographs of Toni Cade Bambara

 

 

 

Posted by admin | Filed Under Blog, Events