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Gorilla, My Love | Introduction

‘‘Gorilla, My Love’’ is the story of Hazel, a young girl who feels that adults do not treat children with respect and honesty. Narrating her own story, she tells of two incidents in which adults demonstrated their untrustworthiness. Hazel comes from the kind of family that the author, Toni Cade Bambara, believed was under-represented in fiction of the 1970s: she is an African American girl living in New York City, in a home with two loving parents who emphasize the values of education and of keeping one’s word. Although Bambara herself was a political activist, the story is not primarily political. Hazel’s feelings are nearly universal, shared by most adolescents.

‘‘Gorilla, My Love’’ was first published in the November 1971 issue of Redbook Magazine with the title ‘‘I Ain’t Playin, I’m Hurtin.’’ A year later, it became the title story in Bambara’s first short story collection. ‘‘Gorilla, My Love’’ is one of several in the collection that feature strong first-person narrators speaking conversationally, rather than in a standard formal English. On the strength of this story and others, Bambara was widely praised for her ability to capture the authentic sounds of adolescence and of African American voices.

Gorilla, My Love Summary

As ‘‘Gorilla, My Love’’ opens, a first-person narrator says, ‘‘That was the year Hunca Bubba changed his name.’’ It soon becomes clear that the speaker is a young person, but not until the story is nearly over is it revealed that she is a girl, and that her name is Hazel. In the opening scene, Hazel is riding in a car with her Granddaddy Vale, her Hunca Bubba (Uncle Bubba) and her younger brother, Baby Jason. They have been on a trip South to bring pecans back home. Granddaddy Vale is driving, Hazel is navigating from the front seat and therefore is called ‘‘Scout’’ during the trip, and Hunca Bubba and Baby Jason are sitting in the back with the buckets of dusty pecans. Hunca Bubba, who has decided that it is time he started using his given name, Jefferson Winston Vale, is in love, and will not stop talking about the woman he loves. He has a photo of her, and the movie theater in the photo’s background catches Hazel’s attention because she is ‘‘a movie freak from way back.’’

This launches Hazel into a long digression, told in the past tense, that makes up most of the story— almost five of the story’s seven and a half pages. In this story-within-the-story, Hazel, Baby Jason, and their brother Big Brood go... » Complete Gorilla, My Love Summary