"A Study Guide for Toni Cade Bambara's ""Those Bones Are Not My Child"""

By Gale and Cengage

"A Study Guide for Toni Cade Bambara's ""Those Bones Are Not My Child"", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Dec 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9780028665979

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A Study Guide for Toni Cade Bambara’s Those Bones Are Not My Child

Toni Cade Bambara

1999

Introduction

Toni Cade Bambara was living in Atlanta, Georgia, in the late 1970s and early 1980s when a series of kidnappings and killings terrified the city. The victims were African American, and the unsuccessful efforts of the police department to solve the case led to harsh criticism, including accusations of racism and ineptitude. Bambara researched the events carefully and, on the background of fact, formed a fictional family whose oldest son goes missing to create her final novel, Those Bones Are Not My Child (1999). Bambara died before she could complete the book, but her friend Toni Morrison, an experienced editor and Nobel Prize–winning author, brought Bambara's book to publication, reducing the length of the manuscript by half to refine the story. The result is an epic story of a family sick with worry and struggling to maintain hope that their son will come back to them, living in a city in turmoil. Because the central historical events of the novel include violent crimes, there are occasional shocking details in the text that may be unsuitable for younger students.

Author Biography

Bambara was born Miltona Mirkin Cade in Harlem, New York, on March 25, 1939. She grew up there and in nearby boroughs. When she was about five or six years old, she shortened her first name to Toni. In 1970, she found the name Bambara in some of her great-grandmother's papers and decided to adopt the surname as her own.

In 1959, Bambara graduated from Queens College with a bachelor's degree in English and theater arts. The same year, she published her first short story, Sweet Town. After a couple of years employed as a social worker, she traveled to Italy and France in 1961 to study acting. She then returned home, enrolled in a program at City College of the City University of New York, and earned her master's degree in 1964.

After her graduate studies were concluded, Bambara taught English at the City University's SEEK program for disadvantaged kids and worked on her writing. She published more short stories and also got involved in film writing and production. She continued her work in film when she was hired as an associate professor of English at Rutgers University's Livingston College in 1969. She stayed at Livingston until 1974 and later taught at the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia.

Bambara's first book was the 1972 shortstory collection Gorilla, My Love, which was edited by Toni Morrison. A second short-story collection followed in 1977, The Sea Birds Are Still Alive. In 1980, Bambara published the novel The Salt Eaters, which won the American Book Award. Another prestigious writing award, the Langston Hughes Society Award, came the following year, but Bambara focused on film and television writing and production for a few years before returning to literature with the 1987 novel If Blessing Comes.

Bambara died on December