Linda J. Holmes

A Joyous Revolt: Toni Cade Bambara, Writer and Activist is the first-ever, full-length biography of a trailblazing artist who championed black women in her fiction as well as in her life. This incisive study provides a comprehensive treatment of Bambara’s published and unpublished works, and it also documents her emerging vision of her role as an agent of change.

The biography allows readers into the personal life of Bambara, offering personal insights into a woman with a strong public persona and friendships with other celebrated artists of her era. Perhaps most important for those seeking to understand and appreciate Bambara’s legacy, it connects her oeuvre to the context of her experience and places all of her wide-ranging creative work in the context of her singular vision.

Margaret Charles Smith, a ninety-one-year-old Alabama midwife, has thousands of birthing stories to tell. Sifting through nearly five decades of providing care for women in rural Greene County, she relates the tales that capture the life-and-death struggle of the birthing experience and the traditions, pharmacopeia, and spiritual attitudes that influenced her practice. Believed to be the oldest living (though retired) traditional African American midwife in Alabama, Smith is one of the few who can recount old-time birthing ways.

In Savoring the Salt, a host of poets, scholars, writers, political activists and filmmakers recall Toni Cade Bambara, a woman whose voice and vision played a vital role in shaping African American culture in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Bambara's multifaceted career took off with the publication of her collection of stories, Gorilla, My Love in 1972 and ended abruptly with her death in 1995. In that short time, she produced an extraordinary body of work - more stories, a novel, a book of non-fiction, a documentary film - and remained dedicated to teaching and political work. The book examines these aspects of Bambara's life and work; each section begins with an excerpt from her writings, some unpublished until now. The notable contributors - Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Pearl Cleage, Ruby Dee, Bevery Guy-Sheftall, Nikki Giovanni, Avery Gordon, Audre Lorde, and Sonia Sanchez - offer insights into her work, celebrations of her indomitable spirit, and assessments of her enduring influence. Savoring the Salt is a book for her loyal readers and for those coming to her work for the first time.