Gorilla, My Love
Toni Cade Bambara · 1972
Bambara's stories in Black vernacular speech were a revelation: funny, furious, and politically alive. Toni Morrison called her "one of our most gifted writers." These stories anticipated the voice of an entire generation.
The case against
Voice carries everything in these fifteen stories, and sometimes voice is all there is: several pieces are extended riffs that end just as plot threatens to start. Read straight through, the young narrators blend into one sharp-tongued girl. "The Lesson" and "Raymond's Run" earn the anthology slots; some of the rest reads as rehearsal.
Short Stories · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
