help her brother, Raymond, improve his skill as a runner. Hazel is a strong, honest, hardworking young girl who also comes to respect the abilities of Gretchen, a girl who has been her rival. The story ends with Hazel and Gretchen exchanging “this big smile of respect” that is “about as real a smile as girls can do for each other, considering we don’t practice real smiling every day.”

In “Maggie of the Green Bottles,” Bambara shows the relationship between a young girl and Maggie, a strange older women who drinks too much and behaves in a bizarre manner. The young girl overlooks Maggie’s eccentric behavior and sees her bottles as magic.

Manny, the male character in “The Hammer Man,” disabled after a fall from a roof, is the crazy boy of the neighborhood. The unnamed protagonist, a young girl, watches Manny practicing basketball in the dark, trying to relive the last minutes of a game in his past in which he missed what could have been the final winning shot. When two police officers approach Manny to see what he is doing in the park after dark, he reacts in a confused manner and the policemen take him away in their patrol car. Although no act of violence takes place, Bambara shows that even a young child can show compassion and concern for others.

Toni Cade Bambara is a New Yorker who grew up in Harlem. She added “Bambara” to her name after she saw the word written on her grandmother’s notebook in an old trunk. According to Webster’s Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary, the word “Bambara” means “a member of an African people of the upper Niger” or “a Mande language of the Bambara people.”

Bambara draws her material from the people living in black communities. In her commitment to portray strong female characters, she employs female narrators to tell stories that show women in a positive light. She says that she is “about the empowerment and development of our sisters and our community.” Bambara’s characters are young, hip, tough, humorous black women, much like the characters that Terry McMillan creates in her novel Mama (1987). When asked about the differences between African American male and female writers, Bambara says, “brothers generally set things out of doors, on open terrain, that is, male turf.” Bambara’s female characters, however, such as Hazel in “Raymond’s Run,” are out on the street. She creates strong female characters of different ages. The young girls are often spunky and outspoken, tough, sassy, and bright.

Bambara provides a realistic view of the world of African American communities in stories she calls “on-the-block, in-the-neighborhood, back-glance pieces.” She is a novelist, short-story writer, editor, playwright, and lecturer. She won the American Book Award for her novel The Salt Eaters and the Best Documentary of 1986 Award from the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters for The Bombing of Osage.

Bambara employs several techniques to portray Hazel’s neighborhood realistically. By using the names of real New York theaters and streets, such as the RKO Hamilton and Amsterdam Avenue, she creates a realistic setting. Adding to the realism, she captures the unique speech patterns of the people who make up this neighborhood. Her characters speak in the rich black dialect of the street with all its vitality and humor. It is their powerful speech patterns that make Bambara’s characters come to life in expressions such as “If you scary like me” and “they dusty sometime.” She uses “ax” for “ask” and uses verb forms that are formally incorrect, such as “it do get me in trouble.” When Hazel says that the film is “not about no gorilla,” the double negative sounds typical of a child’s language. Hazel’s speech contains such slang expressions as “give her some lip” and “no lie.” She describes the matron in the theater as getting “too salty.”

The imagery that Hazel employs is fresh and believable as the expressions of a child. Hazel describes her uncle’s looking at her “real strange . . . like he lost in some weird town in the middle of night and lookin for directions and there’s no one to ask.” At one moment in his past, Hunca Bubba adopted an African name, which to Hazel sounded “very geographical weatherlike . . . like somethin you’d find in a almanac.” The pecans in the truck make a rattling noise “like a rat in the buckets.”

Several devices help convey the importance of family in Bambara’s story. For example, she uses nicknames to show how closely knit Hazel’s family is. Granddaddy calls Hazel “Scout” and “Precious”; Mama calls her “Badbird.” She is “Miss Muffin” to Aunt Jo and “Peaches” to Hunca Bubba. Bambara also combines humor and religion to show the strength of the family. In one of the most humorous passages in the story, Bambara uses Hazel’s literal view of Jesus on the cross to show that Hazel believes in the Bible story but feels that her family would not have allowed a family member to suffer such a fate. Hazel believes in God and the stories from the Bible but interprets these stories literally. She applies the story of Jesus on the cross to the world that she knows, saying her parents would not stand for anyone treating their children that way. “I can just see it now, big Brood up there on the cross . . . and my Mama say Get down from there you big fool . . . and my Daddy yellin to Granddaddy to get him a ladder cause Big Brood actin the fool . . . and my mama and her sister Daisy jumpin on them Romans beatin them with they pocketbooks.”

In “Gorilla, My Love” Bambara has created a world full of humor, love, and laughter, and a family that will surely help Hazel overcome her sense of loss.

Sources
Bambara, Toni Cade, ‘‘Gorilla, My Love,’’ in Gorilla, My Love, Vintage, 1992, pp. 13–20.

———, ‘‘How She Came by Her Name: An Interview with Louis Massiah,’’ in Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions: Fiction, Essays, and Conversations, edited by Toni Morrison, Pantheon, 1996, pp. 201–45.

———, ‘‘Salvation Is the Issue,’’ in Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation, edited by Mari Evans, Anchor Books, 1984, pp. 41–47.

———, ‘‘A Sort of Preface,’’ in Gorilla, My Love, Vintage, 1992.

———, ‘‘What It Is I Think I’m Doing Anyhow,’’ in The Writer on Her Work, edited by Janet Sternburg, W. W. Norton, 1980, p. 154.

Bryan, C. D. B., Review of Gorilla, My Love, in New York Times Book Review, October 15, 1972, p. 31.

Burks, Ruth Elizabeth, ‘‘From Baptism to Resurrection: Toni Cade Bambara and the Incongruity of Language,’’ in Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation, edited by Mari Evans, Anchor Books, 1984, pp. 48–49.

Ensslen, Klaus, ‘‘Toni Cade Bambara: Gorilla, My Love,’’ in The African American Short Story, 1970 to 1990: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Wolfgang Karrer and Barbara Puschmann-Nalenz, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1993, pp. 41–44.

Hargrove, Nancy D., ‘‘Youth in Toni Cade Bambara’s Gorilla, My Love,’’ in the Southern Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 1, Fall 1983, pp. 81–83.

Review of Gorilla, My Love, in Saturday Review, Vol. 55, No. 47, November 18, 1972, p. 97.

Further Reading
Bambara, Toni Cade, Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions: Fiction, Essays, and Conversations, edited by Toni Morrison, Pantheon, 1996. Toni Morrison, Bambara’s editor at Random House, assembled this collection of six previously unpublished stories and six essays after Bambara’s death. In ‘‘How She Came by Her Name,’’ an interview with Louis Massiah, Bambara discusses her childhood, her early political life, and how Gorilla, My Love came to be published.

Butler-Evans, Elliott, Race, Gender, and Desire: Narrative Strategies in the Fiction of Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker, Temple University Press, 1989. Butler-Evans examines two aesthetics in the works of these writers: an African American nationalism and African American feminism. He finds that in Bambara’s fiction from the 1970s these currents are at odds with each other, but that she resolves some of the tension in her work from the 1980s.

Moraga, Cherríe, and Gloria Anzaldúa, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983. Bambara contributed a foreword to this anthology of personal essays, criticism, and poetry by women of color in the United States. Much of the writing comes out of a desire for a unified Third World feminist movement that is not focused on the needs of men, or of white women.

Muther, Elizabeth, ‘‘Bambara’s Feisty Girls: Resistance Narratives in Gorilla, My Love,’’ in African American Review, Vol. 36, No. 3, Fall 2002, pp. 447–59. Muther discusses Senator Daniel P. Moynihan’s 1965 report The Negro Family: The Case for National Action as a landmark of white liberal guilt, and ‘‘Gorilla, My Love’’ as a story of African American empowerment that resists Moynihan’s analysis.

Neo-Black Arts Movement
Bambara is frequently linked with the Neo-Black Arts Movement (also known as the Black Arts Movement), an artistic, literary, and critical movement that emerged from the Black Power Movement and flourished during the 1960s and early 1970s. The Black Power Movement aimed to establish a distinct black state within the United States, driven by the belief that the predominantly nonviolent Civil Rights movement was falling short of its objectives. Advocates of this movement felt that nonviolent resistance relied excessively on the goodwill of oppressors and demanded too much emotional labor from the oppressed. Additionally, they noted that the Civil Rights movement had concentrated on addressing segregation in the South, neglecting to significantly improve the lives of African Americans in northern cities. They advocated for direct political and economic action by the oppressed and made it clear that they were prepared to use violence if necessary to achieve equality for African Americans.

The Neo-Black Arts Movement produced literature with a strong political consciousness, and its critics analyzed literature through a political framework. Writers within the movement believed that every piece of art is inherently political and that any work featuring African Americans either contributes to or detracts from the struggle for equality. Their works portrayed African Americans as positive and powerful figures. They called for self-determination for African Americans, an end to global capitalism, and a new solidarity among African nations to combat racial inequality worldwide. As Bambara articulated in her essay ‘‘What It Is I Think I’m Doing Anyhow,’’ ‘‘Through writing I attempt to celebrate the tradition of resistance, attempt to tap Black potential, and try to join the chorus of voices that argues that exploitation and misery are neither inevitable nor necessary.’’ Bambara extended the movement’s ideology by urging African Americans to scrutinize gender roles within their communities. She believed that much of the revolutionary writing by African Americans was undermined by a male supremacist perspective and sought models from other countries where men and women collaborated more equitably.

Bambara regarded the writer John Oliver Killens as the ‘‘spiritual father’’ of the Neo-Black Arts Movement. Killens had established the Harlem Writers Guild in the 1950s, and in 1964, he co-founded the Organization for Afro-American Unity with Civil Rights leader Malcolm X. Numerous writers associated with the Neo-Black Arts Movement, such as Paule Marshal, Audrey Lorde, and Ossie Davis, had been part of the Harlem Writers Guild and admired Killen’s 1954 novel Youngblood for its celebratory tone. Bambara followed Killen’s example in her own work, striving to depict African Americans as strong and dignified, to take pride in black culture, and to expose the injustices of racism and classism.

The movement held that black art was inherently distinct from art created by white individuals, asserting that only black people, using black criteria, could properly evaluate and appreciate black art. Not all African American writers of the 1960s, however, were involved in the Neo-Black Arts Movement or any political movement. Some writers did not believe that art must necessarily be political. Influential Black Arts theorists like Amiri Baraka publicly criticized African Americans whose work they deemed not to be "valid" black writing, accusing these writers of either collaborating with or being misled by their capitalist oppressors. Bambara’s criticism did not press other African American writers to emulate her, but in "Salvation Is the Issue," she celebrated the idea that writing is a legitimate and significant way to contribute to the empowerment of the community that identifies her. She acknowledged that this was what her "colleagues in the Neo-Black Arts Movement... had been teaching for years." Most Americans who converse with both whites and African Americans in informal settings can detect general differences in their speech. The term "Vernacular Black English" (VBE) was coined in the 1970s to describe a dialect of English commonly learned at home and spoken by African Americans. VBE is a true dialect, governed by its own rules for syntax, pronunciation, and grammar. Starting in the 1970s, educators began to recognize and honor VBE as a legitimate language rather than dismissing it as merely "bad grammar" or "sloppy pronunciation." (In the 1960s, it was referred to as "Nonstandard Negro English.") Educators continued to believe that African American students should learn to speak "Standard English" to succeed in a broader world that would expect it. However, many gradually came to see that being able to speak both "Standard English" and VBE was as enriching as being able to speak both English and French. During the period when these issues were first gaining public attention, Bambara and other writers contributed to the respect given to the dialect by demonstrating its functionality and power in stories like "Gorilla, My Love."

Debates about Black English have persisted since the 1970s. In the 1980s, the term "African American Vernacular English" (AAVE) replaced VBE. In the 1990s, the term "Ebonics" was introduced to describe what some consider a separate African language, distinct from English, spoken by African Americans. Although the terminology has evolved and more ethnic groups have joined the conversation, the core questions remain about who should speak vernacular dialects and in which contexts.

Frame Structure
The structure of ‘‘Gorilla, My Love’’ is known as a ‘‘frame’’ structure because the story of Hazel, Granddaddy Vale, Hunca Bubba, and Baby Jason returning from the South with pecans encloses the narrative of the movie theater, much like a frame surrounds a picture. The opening scene progresses without any indication that the story will shift direction. Readers are introduced to the characters through the narrator’s perspective, sensing her irritation and noting the photograph in Hunca Bubba’s hand. The narrator’s attention is caught by a movie theater in the background of the photo, and she remarks, ‘‘Cause I am a movie freak from way back, even though it do get me in trouble sometime.’’ Despite this comment, the focus remains on the characters in the car.

However, the next line, ‘‘Like when me and Big Brood and Baby Jason was on our own,’’ marks a sudden shift as the narrator begins recounting the tale of the falsely advertised movie. This abrupt transition, without any explanation, leaves the reader unable to see how the stories are connected in Hazel’s mind, aside from the shared element of movie theaters. It appears to be a childish, minor link. When Hazel returns to the car trip narrative near the story’s end with another abrupt line (‘‘So there I am in the navigator seat’’), the reader still struggles to understand the connection between the events. Only when Hazel reminds Hunca Bubba of his earlier promise to wait and marry her does it become clear why she is upset and why she perceives the two events as similar. By framing the movie theater episode with the car trip and withholding explanations for the shifts, Bambara enhances the moment of realization for the reader, making it raw and unfiltered, just as Hazel experiences it.

The frame is an ancient structural device commonly used to link multiple stories together. Examples include Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth-century Canterbury Tales and the fifteenth-century Persian and Arabian stories known as A Thousand and One Nights. Washington Irving’s eighteenth-century tale Rip Van Winkle is framed by an account of how the narrator discovered the story among the notes of a deceased man. The narrator humorously casts doubt on the tale by insisting that it is true.

Point of View
The term "point of view" refers to how an author delivers a story to the audience. It determines who the narrator is—the individual telling the story. In "Gorilla, My Love," the point of view is identified as "first person," indicating that the narrative is conveyed by a character within the story, Hazel, who recounts the events as she experiences them. Hazel employs the first-person pronoun "I" throughout the narrative and does not possess the ability or inclination to convey other characters' thoughts or reactions, except as she observes them. For instance, the reader does not gain insight into Daddy’s thoughts when Hazel recounts the incident at the theater. Hazel notes that Daddy "had the suspect it was me," and after her explanation, "Daddy put his belt back on." However, the reader only has direct access to Hazel’s internal reflections.

The story is conveyed as if Hazel were speaking aloud, almost breathlessly, without interruption, and the listener remains unidentified. Shifts in the narrative occur abruptly, mirroring the human thought process, and the narrator does not pause to clarify connections or censor her thoughts. The photograph of Hunca Bubba’s girlfriend with a theater in the background reminds Hazel of her fondness for movies, which in turn reminds her of being deceived into watching King of Kings, featuring a god too weak to endure in Hazel’s resilient family. This recollection intensifies her anger, bringing her back to thoughts of Hunca Bubba. By presenting Hazel’s unfiltered speech, the emotional impact of the story is heightened. Bambara does not intend for the reader to stand outside the story, analyzing from an adult perspective whether Hazel’s feelings and actions are justified. When Hazel echoes Hunca Bubba’s words, stating, "I say back just how he said it so he can hear what a terrible thing it is," she does not elaborate on why it is terrible. From Hazel’s viewpoint, it is self-evident, and she anticipates that the reader/listener will side with her. The reader experiences the story not as a detached observer but as a participant and ally, listening to a distressed child on the verge of tears.

1970: Films are mainly viewed in large cinemas, which regularly update their offerings. However, the selection available on any particular day is quite limited.

Today: With the advent of video cassettes and DVDs, movie enthusiasts now have access to thousands of options at minimal cost. While cinemas continue to screen blockbuster films, studios generate most of their revenue from video and DVD sales and rentals.

1970: The majority of cinemas are independently owned and operated, allowing them to choose what films to screen and when. Managers have the freedom to showcase the latest Hollywood hits or low-budget reruns.

Today: Most cinemas nationwide exhibit the same films simultaneously. Independent and low-budget films, as well as theaters showing older movies, are uncommon.

1970: No African American has received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction or the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Today: Outstanding works by African American authors are being acknowledged and celebrated. Notable Pulitzer Prize winners in fiction include James Alan McPherson (1979), Alice Walker (1983), Edward Jones (2004), and Toni Morrison, who has also won both the Pulitzer (1988) and the Nobel Prize (1993).

1970: The Great Migration, which saw over two million African Americans move from the rural South to major northern cities, peaked in the 1930s. Despite this, many families in New York and other large northern cities maintain connections to the South and frequently visit.

Today: The Great Migration has ended and is reversing. The trend now sees middle-class individuals seeking job opportunities relocating from northern cities to large southern cities. Those who remain in Harlem and other northern areas have often been there for generations, with weakened familial ties to the South.

‘‘Gorilla, My Love’’ was recorded by Listening Library and can be found in at least two of their short story collections. The first, Selected Shorts from Symphony Space, produced in 1989, contains six stories on two cassette tapes. The second, Selected Shorts, Volume XVI, Fictions for Our Time, produced in 2002, features fourteen stories on three compact disks.