The stories [in "Gorilla, My Love" and "The Sea Birds Are Still Alive"], describing the lives of black people in the North and the South, could be more exactly typed as vignettes and significant anecdotes, although a few of them are fairly long. Some of them are shapelier than others, steadier in tone, more compact; all are notable for their purposefulness, a more or less explicit inspirational angle, and a distinctive motion of the prose, which swings from colloquial narrative to precarious metaphorical heights and over to street talk, at which Bambara is unbeatable….

Although there are traces in Bambara's work of sexual conflict, traditional and contemporary brands, and although the women are naturally more prominent and more deeply described, there isn't a shortage of admirable men…. (p. 169)

Certain topics and rhetorical turns place Bambara chronologically and politically. A key story in this respect is "Broken Field Running," with its African names, community radio station, and Job Corps centers; with references to Huey Newton, the Third World, napalm, and Vietnamese children…. Interesting in this way, "Broken Field Running" is also one of Bambara's best stories, despite its rather bald politics. A man and a woman, teachers of a Socratic sort of a neighborhood alternative school, conduct a group of children home through city streets in a snowstorm…. The point of view is the woman's, the wind and snow reinforcing a loss of heart…. Near the end, hope glimmers from an unexpected, non-political source…. Under the pressure of images and associations, however, the trek has taken on the significance of a pilgrim's progress, and the story ends with a nice unresolved chord, just short of emotional release…. (pp. 169-70)

"The Salt Eaters" is a grander, in some ways grimmer version of "Broken Field Running," turning on the same point of suspense: the fate of a discouraged woman. The stout-hearted man, hardening times, ominous weather, oracular elders expounding salt lore, children "waiting to grow up, spread out, leap forward, soar"—the elements of that story and others are recombined and elaborated into a kind of tribal epic, which tells of the struggle against diffused seventies energy and the possible shapes of a new era. (p. 170)

The novel is set in the city of Claybourne, Georgia, in 1978, and winds out backward, forward, and sideways from then and there…. Without a special edge that would make a heroine of her, Velma is more of a stand-in for the people around her—family, friends, citizens of Claybourne and more distant parts of the world, including Asia, Africa, and Rikers Island. The expanse of a novel has freed Bambara to follow her diverging lines of thought with considerable abandon. An elaborator by nature, she presents a crowd of characters, isolated from one another, unconscious or forgetful of their personal, communal, and historical connections, and she moves easily among them, looking and listening from different angles, at different levels, gathering evidence for a vision of renewed solidarity….

[Specific prophecy is] hard to resist for a fearless writer of strong convictions. There is an awkward stretch near the end of the book where loose ends are hastily and unnecessarily snipped. "By the fall of '83 … the winter of '83/'84 … the spring of '84," So-and-So "would say," "would have taught himself."… Others "would remember," "would laugh," "would have occasion to say." Bambara means to chase down all accounts of the situation and sometimes loses momentum in the attempt. The force of the book, however, is a result of this determination. Piecing together fragments of events, dialogue, memories, dreams, premonitions, nostalgia, folklore, religious and political and literary allusions, and old songs, Bambara sails along, for the most part smoothly, toward the apocalyptic thunderstorm and "burst cocoon" of her finale, searching, as she says of one of her people, "for a 'like' that would pin it down so he could be done with it." Pinning it down is one thing; Bambara has come up with a book full of marvels. [Langston] Hughes might have pointed out that being done with it is another thing entirely, for a writer. (pp. 170-71)