Deep Sightings & Rescue Missions: Fiction, Essays, and Conversations [Paperback]

Toni Cade Bambara (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 26, 1999

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Toni Cade Bambara published a novel and two collections of stories, yet before her death in December 1995, she had not published new work in 14 years. Her long silence was all the more ironic because Bambara had, in 1970, edited a ground-breaking anthology of black women's writing called The Black Woman. Here, Toni Morrison presents six hitherto unpublished stories and six essays, striking work that shows Bambara's view of the writer as cultural worker and her concern with politics and the empowerment of black Americans. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

This compilation of selected short fiction, essays and interviews by (and with) the late Bambara (The Salt Eaters) is her first published work in 14 years, and it provides intriguing insights into this challenging African American writer. The collection includes a warm, appreciative preface by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, who also edited this volume. The six stories feature characters who seek self-definition through their relationships with others: in "Going Critical," a mother slowly dying from radiation poisoning reflects on her relationship with her daughter during a day at the beach; and two boys are puzzled by the community's warm reception of a painter who transforms their favorite landmark and play area in "The War of the Wall." The second section features Bambara's voice much more clearly, as she tackles discursively the social and political concerns, often about race and gender, that animate her fiction. Her film criticism is especially trenchant: she discusses blaxploitation films of the 1960s and '70s, Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust and Spike Lee's School Daze with a sharp eye for their complexity, message and vision. She also questions the assumptions behind our daily language, provoking readers to think in more complicated terms. Bambara (1939-1995) never made any bones about the fact that she viewed writing as a political act. The writings collected here show that, unlike many others, she rarely let her activist motives cripple her aesthetic sense or her intellectual honesty.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Contemporaries Ed edition (January 26, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679774076
• ISBN-13: 978-0679774075
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,776,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Award Winner, June 23, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions: Fiction, Essays, and Conversations (Hardcover)

The Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) chose this book as a 1997 Nonfiction Honor Book. The awards recognize excellence in adult fiction and nonfiction by African American authors