A community of Black faith healers witness an event that will change their lives forever in this "hard-nosed, wise, funny" novel (Los Angeles Times). One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Set in a fictional city in the American South, the novel also "inhabits the nonlinear, sacred space and sacred time of traditional African religion” (The New York Times Book Review). Though they all united in their search for the healing properties of salt, some of them are centered, some are off-balance; some are frightened, and some are daring. From the men who live off welfare women to the mud mothers who carry their children in their hides, the novel brilliantly explores the narcissistic aspect of despair and the tremendous responsibility that comes with physical, spiritual, and mental well-being.

Edited and with a Preface by Toni Morrison, this posthumous collection of short stories, essays, and interviews offers lasting evidence of Bambara's passion, lyricism, and tough critical intelligence. Included are tales of mothers and daughters, rebels and seeresses, community activists and aging gangbangers, as well as essays on film and literature, politics and race, and on the difficulties and necessities of forging an identity as an artist, activist, and black woman. It is a treasure trove not only for those familiar with Bambara's work, but for a new generation of readers who will recognize her contribution to contemporary American letters.

ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • This suspenseful novel portrays a community--and a family--under siege, during the shocking string of murders of black children in Atlanta in the early 1980s. Written over a span of twelve years, and edited by Toni Morrison, who calls Those Bones Are Not My Child the author's magnum opus, Toni Cade Bambara's last novel leaves us with an enduring and revelatory chronicle of an American nightmare. Having elected its first black mayor in 1980, Atlanta projected an image of political progressiveness and prosperity. But between September 1979 and June 1981, more than forty black children were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered throughout "The City Too Busy to Hate." Zala Spencer, a mother of three, is barely surviving on the margins of a flourishing economy when she awakens on July 20, 1980 to find her teenage son Sonny missing. As hours turn into days, Zala realizes that Sonny is among the many cases of missing children just beginning to attract national attention. Growing increasingly disillusioned with the authorities, who respond to Sonny's disappearance with cold indifference, Zala and her estranged husband embark on a desperate search. Through the eyes of a family seized by anguish and terror, we watch a city roiling with political, racial, and class tensions.

Ten stories of Black life written with Ms. Bambara's characteristic vigor, sensibility and winning irony. The stories range from the timid and bumbling confusion of a novice community worker in "The Apprentice" to the love-versus-politics crisis of an organizers wife, to the dark and bright notes of the title story about the passengers on a refugee ship from a war-torn Asian nation. Young girls, weary men, lovers, frauds and revolutionaries -- Toni Cade Bambara handles them all the expertise, passion and huge talent. As the Chicago Daily News said, "Ms. Bambara grabs you by the throat...she dazzles, she charms."

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection The story of the storm went like this: it was so cold that the neighborhood families burned anything they could to stay warm. The mayor arranged an emergency school bus to get the kids to school. But only the children worried about how the dogs were holding up. “Ice” exhibits the commitment to storytelling and the intersection between fiction and politics that made Toni Cade Bambara one of the most important voices of her generation, and an advocate of recognition for African American women writers. A selection from Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions, a posthumous collection of Bambara’s uncollected writings, included here with a loving preface by Toni Morrison—a discussion of her relationship with Bambara and the unprecedented “heart cling” of her fiction. An eBook short.

A story about Squeaky, the fastest thing on two feet, and her brother Raymond.

On December 9, 1995, Toni Cade Bambara died at the age of fifty-six, a profound loss to American culture. In its obituary the New York Times called her "a major contributor to the emerging genre of black women's literature, along with the writers Toni Morrison and Alice Walker." The author of many acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, among them three pioneering and timeless volumes: Gorilla, My Love and The Seabirds Are Still Alive, both collections of stories, and The Salt Eaters, a novel, Bambara had not published a new book in the fourteen years prior to her death. She developed during that time a keen interest in film - as a scriptwriter, filmmaker, critic, and teacher - and collaborated on several television documentaries, including The Bombing of Osage Avenue, about the police assault on the MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia, and on the W.E.B. Du Bois Film Project. Bambara also helped to launch the careers of many other black women filmmakers. Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions is a brilliant distillation of Bambara's original sensibility and a confirmation of her status as one of America's great post-World War II writers. Here is a rich selection of her writings, many of which have never before appeared in print: stories ("Madame Bai and the Taking of Stone Mountain," "Ice," "Luther on Sweet Auburn"), essays ("Language and the Writer," "The Education of a Storyteller), film criticism ("School Daze"), and a revealing interview.

Describes the author's sixteen-year struggle to complete her film

Presents stories, poems, and essays by Black women discussing topics such as politics, racism in education, the Black man, sex, the Pill, and child-raising in the ghetto.