Who is Toni Cade Bambara?
Bambara was born Miltona Mirkin Cade on March 25, 1939. She grew up in Harlem, Brooklyn, and Jersey City. She attended schools in New York City and the southern United States. She said that she would change her name to Toni while in kindergarten, and in 1970 added “Bambara” when she learned that her grandmother had taken that name as well. She studied English and theater at Queen’s College and mime in France in the 1960s. She also became interested in dance before pursuing graduate work in African fiction at the City College of New York. Bambara taught at Rutgers University and Spelman College. Bambara participated in several community and activist organizations, and her work was influenced by the Civil Rights and Black Nationalist movements of the 1960s. Trips to Cuba in 1973 and Vietnam in 1975 prompted Bambara to contextualize the struggles of African Americans in relation to the Third World. Bambara wrestled with and finally died of colon cancer in 1995.
