The Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) chose this book as a 1997 Nonfiction Honor Book. The awards recognize excellence in adult fiction and nonfiction by African American authors

I think Raymond's Run is a epic book.I really liked the story and it's plot. I also liked the characters and their personalities. This would be a great book for someone who was into heart touching novels.

I really, really loved this book. It is a great book. I think that this book is awesome and has alot of meaning and everyone should read this book. This book shows that even the ungifted are talented, and can do what ever they want to achieve. Many people over look them but they are just as smart as you are. This book also shows a little on the edge of your seat competition. Of course the good guy always wins, and that happens in this book. This book reminds me of " I Know why the Cahed Bird sings" but for some reason this story has more meaning. If you haven't read this story you need to go and get it.

I thank that the story raymonds run is a good book.I can relat to the story my sister bits me in every race. I can also relat to this story i have to take care of my sister. I also know how the girl fills in school where Grachit thoughs every thing in here face i go to school with school kids like that.

Eric McDowell

Daughters of the Dust was a fascinating movie about the struggles of a female-headed, multigenerational family moving to the American mainland. It was made in fits and starts due to continual fundraising for the movie that Dash had to do. This book documents getting the movie made. It has a good section in which Dash and cultural critic bell hooks discuss the symbolisms in the film. Given that even Spike Lee has trouble raising money for his films, it is essential that incipient black filmmakers get advice on what they'r getting into. In that way, this book is an important first tool. Those majoring in film studies, feminist studies, or Afro-American studies will want to have this book.

I plowed through Bambara's huge book on the subject of the Atlanta child murders - and I stuck with it out of a loyalty to two of my favorite writers: Bambara and Toni Morrison. It was beautifully written in parts and very tedious in others. My question is this: what happens at the end? I don't get it. Whose voice does Zala hear inside that causes her to rush into Gitten's house. I really have puzzled over this. Clues?

... Zala Spencer has waited up all night for Sonny, her 12-year-old, to come home. Lately he's been hard to manage, but he's never stayed out overnight, and this morning she won't let him stroll in and talk his way around her. As Zala paces the house, she represses the knowledge currently terrifying Atlanta's black community: this summer its children, one by one, are being murdered. Thus readers enter the life of a fictional family whose son disappears during the Atlanta child killings of 1979-1981, when 29 black youths were slain.

Author Toni Cade Bambara was living in Atlanta at the time of the murders, and after several children's bodies were found but officials seemed unconcerned, she began keeping a journal. She filled twelve notebooks, which she spent more than a decade revising into a historical novel. By the time she died in 1995, she had drafted an imposing manuscript, animated by her vexed fascination with America's latest racial Catch-22: that blacks who suspect authorities of prejudice are paranoid, or themselves prejudiced, because our society is now color-blind.

Bambara isn't a one-sided social critic. "Those Bones Are Not My Child" blames black communities for their quietism after the Civil Rights movement: "The ballot secured, reps in office, … folks had laid down their weapons in the public square and sauntered off to read the papers." In Bambara's view all Americans today are chasing the good life instead of social justice. Still, in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981, hundreds of black citizens became activists like Bambara's protagonist, Zala. Weary from the difficulties of raising Sonny in a world dangerous to black males, and now traumatized by his disappearance, Zala is feisty, too. She and her husband join STOP, a group of parents trying to energize a lukewarm, lagging investigation into the killings.

Readers are plunged into the daily round of a community in crisis whose situation is ignored, misunderstood, or exploited by powers-that-be. STOP urges civic leaders to declare a public emergency - something is menacing Atlanta's children, even if it's not an organized vendetta against black youth. But the official view is that systematic or racist violence can't happen in "the city too busy to hate." Stories about serial killings would be bad PR for an Atlanta ambitious to be a world-class location for corporations, conventions, even a future Olympics. Zala finds it infuriating that the minimal publicity given the case treats the parents as primary suspects. Worse, when evidence clears the parents, officials speculate that the children were narcotics runners murdered by ghetto druglords, or runaways from family poverty and neglect who met with fatal accidents.

Bambara shows that when citizens can't trust authorities to be diligent or impartial, rumors multiply. Someone in the black community hears that whites are kidnapping their boys to use in porn films and snuff flicks, but that all evidence implicating whites is being suppressed. Others say that an official deliberately lost a recording of a Klansman's boasts about participating in the murders. Still others insist that the 1980 explosion in a black daycare center that killed four children must be from KKK dynamite, not a flaw in the building's ancient boiler. The arrest of a black man looks like a predictable gambit in a white cover-up, especially because now newspapers jump to give the case daily front-page prominence at last.

Small wonder that Atlanta's black community comes to view the trial of the accused man, Wayne Williams, as a white frame-up. Williams is charged with two killings and convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence, mainly fibers found on the bodies of victims. According to the grapevine, Caucasian hairs were also found but prosecutors ignored that detail, and they apply the fiber evidence to the other murders only because they want all the cases closed even if a killer is still at large. In sum, Bambara's novel shows us what it's like to live hours, days, and years in the midst of beleaguered fear, mistrust, and indignation.

So it's an important story for all Americans, although the book is overlong - the anguish of parents as they seek their missing children, build theories, and witness official inaction is a slender plot on which to hang 600+ pages. Had Bambara lived longer, she might have cut the manuscript. She does try to heighten drama by elaborating sensory detail and starting chapters like short stories whose temporarily withheld explanations might tantalize a reader, but these strategies often prove distracting. Still, the first half of the book compels attention, and domestic scenes with the Spencer family are deft and moving throughout the narrative. The final two chapters become gripping as the mystery of Sonny's disappearance is solved.

In any case, we choose a historical novel for more than just its novelistic technique, and we can't choose a different novel on the subject - there are no others. I'm grateful that Bambara wrote the manuscript before she died and that Nobel-winning novelist Toni Morrison shepherded it through posthumous publication.

I found this book by accident. I went out to buy toilet rolls and bought a book that changed my life instead. Although this reads at times like a draft version with all the glitches it gives a much closer picture of Bambara's need to get this story told. It is filled with a Proustian slowness even stillness that can be overwhelming but the end result is that, for me, I can never read a book again in quite the same way. The content of the book is appalling enough but the casual, even matter of fact way in which a great deal of it is written brings the whole case into your own neighbourhood. Books are about us, they reflect a world we all inhabit and that it what makes this such an important book. Bureacracy chokes us and hides the truth from us; frustrates us. Bamabara and Morrison have produced this volume that will alter the perspective of anybody who reads it through. There is never a final answer. Such crimes can not have an easy explanation. Books of this calibre must be written and read

I think the book Gorilla My Love had no moral value in it what so ever. I read this book for my class, and now here I am stuck wrting a 5 paragraph essay about along with countless other pointless things. Now if you had never written this book, it would have never happened, and I would be enjoying my day. The least yoy could have done is made the story good, but no, now I'm just getting beat over the head with it.

In 8th grade this year, we were assigned to read the book, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. When reading this book, we were asked to choose another book to read independently. I chose Gorilla My Love, by Toni Bambara. I found that Gorilla My Love and To Kill A Mockingbird share a lot of the same themes, in particular, racism. In this collection of short stories, Bambara writes every story through the eyes of a poor black girl, growing up during a difficult time and in a rough urban neighborhood. Through every story, we are able to understand how an African American girl feels, during different times of her life. In both of these two books, racism is a large issue. However, it is told from two very different perspectives. To Kill A Mockingbird is told by a young white girl, and Gorilla My Love is narrated by a young black girl. Both the characters in these two books are very aware of racism, however, the narrator in Gorilla My Love, takes the issue more personally. Bambara relates to the issue much more than a character like Scout. A White person can easily say "racism is wrong," but they could never understand how a Black person feels, for they have to live with the feeling that someone hates them, everyday if their lives. Every story in Gorilla My Love, is a clip of the narrators point of view on the subject. In the story "My Man Bovanne", Bambara mocks the Black community by portraying a mother as "a b**** in heat" while she dances. However, in the story, "The Hammerhead", Bambara takes the issue of racism very seriously, when her brother is sent to a mental hospital for playing basketball on a court that the white officers claimed as theirs. Bambara makes the reader aware of how a Black person would handle a situation. Reading these two books at the same time was very beneficial. Reading about the issue of racism and hearing it from two very different points of view, helps me better understand it. Hearing how both sides of the situation helps me create an educated opinion of my own. I really enjoyed reading these two stories.

BenB Gorilla, My Love In eighth grade this year each studentwas assigned to read a book by a black author, I chose Gorilla, MyLove by Toni Cade Bambara. While reading Gorilla, My Love , as a class we were reading To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. From reading both books at the same time I could see that both books had similar themes and ideas. Both books are mainly about racism through the eyes of a young, teenage, girl. However, in To Kill A Mockingbird the main character is white and in Gorilla, My Love she is black. The main character/narrator in all fifteen short stories in Gorilla, My Love is a black girl living in a cramped apartment complex, in a rough and bitter neighborhood. Each story takes place between the thirties up to the fifties, in a place and time that was more racist towards African Americans. By using a young girl growing up in this setting the reader is able to understand what a black girl would go through in her life. The contrast between the two books was really interesting. In both books racism is a large issue but the perspectives are opposite. In To Kill A Mockingbird the view towards racism is told from an "innocent" white girl, who doesn't understand why people are racist. However, in Gorilla, My Love , racism is viewed by a black girl who is fully aware of racism because it has affected her life so much in the short time she has been alive. Most of To Kill A Mockingbird tells us about racism in some way and in Gorilla, My Love every story is about either racism or the way racism has impacted the lives of her family and friends. In The Lesson, which is on of the short stories, Bambara takes on deep moral issues about racism. The story describes a family who tries to shield their daughter from racism whenever possible. When her grandmother takes her to a fancy white toy store the girl wants to buy a toy but the cashier won't let her because she's black, even though the cashier could become more successful, he won't get past his racist beliefs. Bambara writes about many examples showing just how idiotic racism is. I thought Gorilla, My Love was an eight, from a one through ten scale. It has a lot of great ideas and is very easy to understand. At times the book became rather slow and repetitive but short stories like Hammer Manand My Man Bovanne which both were very good, make up for the uninteresting parts. It was intriguing to see how Bambara's writing differed from Lee's and how they have such similar themes and feelings.

This book was very confusing...not so much too complex to understand, but rather frustrating. The plethora of characters and names was hard to keep track of, and the random chronology of events without any explanation as to what is exactly happening is also annoying. The ending was just blah. Definitely not worth reading. I read the book three times just to figure out if I liked it and I don't.

"The Salt Eaters" by Toni Cade Bambara is definitely not a book for those who are faint at heart. This book is filled with unexpected twists and seemingly extraneous information, and may seem quite confusing at times. There were times when I contemplated not finishing the book, thinking that I was too lost in the thick of the plot to truely garner any meaning. I later realized that the beauty of this classic comes at the end, upon the realization that you were never lost - it was the characters who were lost, they were just bringing you along for the ride. It is much like an excursion through a dense jungle, filled with possible pitfalls and dangerous twists and turns that leads one to emerge upon a beautiful beach, just in time for the sunset.

The possible confusion that one might encounter on a first read through this book is due in part to the fact that it is largely written in the style of an epic poem, rather than in the "traditional" form of a novel. Many of the books subtleties and gems can be discovered upon subsequent readings of the book. As this is my first book by Bambara, I am somewhat unfamiliar with Bambara's usual style - if it can be said that she has one at all - but my experiences with "The Salt Eaters" draws me to dig deeper into her repertoire and learn to appreciate her mastery for her craft.

You need to be aquipped to enter the world of Toni Cade Bambara. I discovered Bambara because her name was often associated with that of Toni Morrison.Bambara is a strong writer, with strong convinctions, and with a militant kind of writing. What she teaches us in this novel is that everything is organized in a network, that everything goes together. More importantly perhaps, she teaches us that freedom is a matter of choice and that it always carries reponsibilities: do you want to be free and what do you want to do with your freedom? This is the question that the novel underscores, the question to which the characters need to find an answer. You come out of "The salt Eaters" full with questions about your place in the universe and what you want in your life. Bambara does not merely depicts a world of victims, of brutalization, alienation and dehumanization. At the center of the novel is the message that you can do something to better the world you live in if only you choose to be well and take responsibility for what it entails. Bambara also makes clear that though everything's in a network, the individual still has the power to take action that may change not only himself and his community but the world at large. For sure, we may question this somewhat idealistic and utopian vision, but is literature anything else but a big utopia?

Some readers may be beffudled at Bambara syntax and vocabulary (and yes this is hard to decode), but once you get beyond that you're just disappointed that Bambara did not write many novels: you're in the presence of a great artist, that is someone that has a style, a vision, and a message.