John O. Killers once commented to Maya Angelou that the most difficult kind of writing was the short story. If this is true, then Toni Cade Bambara has, for some time now, had few peers in the area. Already acknowledged as one of the finest short story writers in the country, Toni Cade Bambara has taken her artistry to the novel—and achieved profound results, with The Salt Eaters. At her best, Toni Cade Bambara has few peers when she is exposing the flaws in black male-female relationships or the unique pain, suffering, and despair that black women experience as they reach out to wholeness. In these respects (and surely others), The Salt Eaters is an unqualified success.

One reviewer/critic describes Ms. Bambara's style as "… comedy with a knife's edge, and tragedy with balm." I cannot agree. For me, The Salt Eaters is a tragedy; comedy is only a "vehicle" that is sometimes used to vivify the tragedy. As one of my former mentors once defined it, quoting the dramatist Pirandello, "tragedy is comedy taken too far."

The book is essentially a psychological study of a black community that begins and ends in an infirmary. It is only the spectacle and mysteriousness of the "healing of Velma" that allows us to ride the panoramic consciousness of the central protagonists, Velma and Minnie, as we learn why Velma finds it difficult to take on the "responsibility of being a well person."

One is led to believe that Velma would like to isolate herself from the world in order to learn about and come to know herself. Bambara says of Velma that she wished "[t]o be … sealed … nothing seeping in. To be … unavailable at last, sealed in and the noise of the world, the garbage locked out. To pour herself grain by grain into the top globe and sift silently down to … the bottom one. That was the sight she'd been on the hunt for." The truth of the matter, we learn, is that Velma is as much afraid to be alone with herself. Being relegated to such a position would mean that she would have to deal with a personal and community life that moves too slowly for her and seems to be caught up in giving its concepts of meaning to the lives of individuals rather than allowing them to forge their own destinies. In this area, Velma has early been more a "rebel" looking for a cause than a woman trying to become whole. It is the attempted suicide that brings her to the reality that she can be whole in this society if she understands and asserts her uniqueness. As Mrs. Heywood counsels: "Have to be whole see whole."

It is left to Minnie Ransom to "heal" Velma. Important here is the fact that the healing is more a figurative healing. This woman of mystery breeds fear in many of the townspeople because she defies any real definition. Although she is seen by some as almost "crazy," her craziness must surely be a most lucid madness. Her task is ultimately to recreate the person that is Velma and make a viable woman-force in the world. Accompanied by her Spiritual Guide—Old Wife, who is a link with the past—Minnie is a unique conduit in the healing of a psyche, producing a wholly unique individual as they merge their histories into a oneness.

Ultimately, the town of Claybourne undergoes a transformation. Virtually every inhabitant has great problems condoning, if not creating, change. The community is very much locked into the past—basically out of fears and its shared sufferings. As Sophie sees it, there is "a fear of the new, a fear to change, to look ahead." And although many of the inhabitants have "eaten salt together" as well as shared bitter experiences, they have not necessarily grown. There is a real possibility that the commiseration has not strengthened but weakened them.

Of the many themes, concepts, and ideas posited by Toni Cade Bambara, one that must be addressed is the significance of the sexual development—which is anything but the commonplace. For individuals like Doc Serge, it is as much a curiosity as a substantive fulfilling part of life. For Obie, it is a "weapon" to be used to assuage deep feelings of insecurity. It is unfortunate that he neither loved well nor wise enough. Ultimately, for Velma it is whatever she wishes it to be at any time, even though she probably sees it far more objectively (emotionally) than anyone. One almost feels that the women, through their ability to objectify it for themselves, come close to neutering the men, depriving them of their stereotypic roles of initiators and manipulators of sex.

The fact that so many possibilities exist insofar as interpretations of The Salt Eaters are concerned points up the richness of the novel. By the time of the storm, the reader has already come to realize that its ominousness is more far-reaching than even this "unusual" storm. A new world is being created. It is as much a psychological conversion as anything else, and Claybourne is but a prelude to something much more encompassing and universal.

In The Salt Eaters, Toni Cade Bambara has interwoven mythmaking, psychological and sociological drama, literary and factual history, with political and philosophical realities. To these, she has brought the artistry of the most difficult area in creative writing, the short story. The range is immense but the focus is keen. Thoughts issue from thought, becoming realities of the characters. Sentence inversions and fragments vivify sights and sounds so that there is no long break in characters' thoughts or story movement. Skillful use of dialect, strategic cliches, and euphemistic symbolism circumvent any real need for involved symbolism.

Toni Cade Bambara has heard the ageless song of black women—a song that centuries have not stilled. Hers is the voice that has refused to be tranquilized into slumber but will share with all women the quality of pain and despair, with the hope that out of the sorrow will emerge the new woman—the whole woman.