Deep Sightings & Rescue Missions: Fiction, Essays, and Conversations - Softcover

Bambara, Toni Cade Cade

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679774076 ISBN 13: 9780679774075

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1999

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

On December 9, 1995, Toni Cade Bambara died of cancer at the age of 56. In its obituary of her, The New York Times called Bambara, "a major contributor to the emerging genre of black women's literature."

From the Back Cover

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.

From the Inside Flap

ith 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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679774076
• ISBN 13: 9780679774075
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272