Toni Cade Bambara: A Woman of and for the People by Michael Simmons for #BambaraOnTFW #BlackLivesMatter Toni Cade Bambara was an organizer who could write, and the sista could really write. But it is not as a writer that I knew Toni: although I first met her in the 1970s while she and Leah Wise were editing an issue of the Southern Exposure magazine. My essay “Up South” was featured in Leah and Tonis co-edited issue. What struck me about Toni during this time was that she was continually engaged in forming organizations that allowed African American artists to develop and share their talent with the community. In doing this, Toni explicitly and implicitly redefined what it meant to be an artist. She eschewed attempts to make art a precious purview of self-conscious and self-centered folks. Even Toni’s seminal 1970 edited anthology, The Black Woman was as much an organizing document as it was a literary work. With contributions from novelist Alice Walker, poets Audre Lorde and Nikki Giovanni, writer Paule Marshall, activist Grace Lee Boggs, and musician Abbey Lincoln, among other bad sistas, “The Black Woman” introduced the world to sistas who would shape and redefine the image of the African American community and the world well into the 21st century.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 13:20:47 +0000
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