Toni Cade Bambara Book summary

Toni Cade Bambara was born with the name Miltona Mirkin Cade in Harlem, New York in 1939. She grew up in the city in different neighborhoods, moving between Harlem, Queens, and Brooklyn. She preferred the name Toni from a young age and adopted Bambara after she discovered it written in one of her grandmother’s old sketchbooks. Toni was given her name from the name of her father’s white employer, Milton Mirkin. Her father was a successful factory worker who found work throughout the difficult years of the depression while her mother encouraged Toni to read, write and perform in the arts. She had been deeply affected by the Harlem Renaissance that was a movement among black artists that began in Toni’s birthplace in the 1920s.

Toni graduated college ahead of schedule and went on to attend Queens College for a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre and English. She published her first short story, Sweet Tom, the same year as her graduation. She went on to study the arts in Europe as well and wrote numerous screenplays during her lifetime. Toni was politically active throughout her life, and she visited communist countries like Cuba and Vietnam to find out about the lives of women under such regimes.