Omg yayy I'm so excited to read this. I'll get right back. Ab yo go grocery shopping. Also ismatu, do you mind reposting the discord link? It's expired
This was refreshing in the sense that I cannot afford higher education, and have been trying to curate the power to be self taught. You give me the tools to maintain and improve who I am through and through. It is a breath of fresh air to my (failed) scholarly lungs to listen to a teacher be passionate and stern about their teachings. To listen to a lecture that engages and entrap as well as forces me to question the very nature of the lecture itself. I know you said (and many other teachers have said) that we give too much power to teachers; to check your sources. But you are the source. You are the source of my plunge into self discipline and a scholarly life that doesn't require me to sell my livelihood to professors and school administrators. I want to thank you and also critique you on not giving yourself enough credit. We are asking so much of you and you deserve to be counted as a source of knowledge. All of me wants to delete this and crawl back into ignorance and excuses to not do the work. But as a student, I will do my best to commit to this and to you in these teachings, for myself and for curating my inner nation as well as my outer nation. You give us the power to give ourselves the power to do the work.
I’m glad you decided to post this live!! and I’m really grateful that it is replayable because i have a feeling I’m gonna keep coming back to it. thankyou so much for all your work and all your words! much love<3
i'm making a list of books to read once my semester is over and both toni morrison and toni cade bambara are now on the list. i'm excited to learn from them, thank you for sharing this.
I would like to begin with how much I love and appreciate that you are amplifying the work of Toni Cade Bambara. I've been not searching yet asking for teachers that are 10 steps ahead of me and here you are putting this beauty of a book on a silver platter. Thank you.
I do want to seriously engage with you call for critique yet I'm not sure how much teeth this one has lol. I thinks you're being a little harsh with how you are asking us to remember names and titles. Do not get me wrong, they are important, crucial, and vital pieces of information. And yet, I, as I am sure many of us are, have not trained/ are building the skill/at differing levels of capacity to immediately recall information, least of all when it's new to us. The relationship between learning, neural plasticity, and the full engagement of our senses are interlocked---nothing new lol. For my lil adhd brain that listens as I'm doing dishes, jumping around and laughing and repeating word for word, trying to grasp onto the titles and quotes that I feel in my center, perhaps I'm out of the practice of memorization. Maybe I gotta be prepared to sit down and take notes. Maybe I gotta spell it out on the plate in soap. But please don't harp on me for forgetting. Cuz truth is, I do need to feel the words pass through my lips, expressed through my hands, visualized in my mind's eye, felt in my core. Will I be able to repeat verbatim? Far from it lmao. But will I speak to a friend and say, "hold up, lemme pull up this very relevant essay that highlights Toni Cade Bambara's work" the same way I'm referencing your "we are addicted to our comforts" essay on a weekly basis? Yes, absolutely. I love referencing/returning to your work. Do I freeze and fumble with remembering? Also yes, absolutely.
Separate note, the person I fell in love with bought me a copy of Mutual (lemon)Aid(e) by David/Daniel (?) Spade the first day we spent together in person. That was this past Thursday lol. Thank you for helping bring me closer to me which brings me closer to love.
Ya know what? I feel the frustration deeper now. I am frustrated by others, thus my own, satisfaction with the stagnancy of our attention span, our capacity to listen and retain and develop new information. It is a muscle we build like every other muscle, out of the culmination of our habits. Is my goal is quote word for word the things that matter to me? Not necessarily, but what deny myself the possibility?
I got hit in the face today with a couple things: what is the moon we are all pointing at? Cuz at first I confused writers for the moon. Then I confused theory for the moon. And now, I wonder, how can I articulate the beauty of the moon myself? To close the gap, like my favorites writers do, between ourselves and the moon?
The other thing I was hit with and the thing I tried to articulate in my initial post: The only way to really teach humility is to practice it. Not in a way that matches our "opponent" (cuz I remember the grains of truth is old people's resentment of young people) but in a way that distinguishes humility from humiliation. Yes, I am really moved by your last essay in being young and needing the wisdom of experience and time. The worm that stills wriggles (I should memorize your initial title cuz it was hilarious). I wish the best for you and your family Ismatu. Your words are often a guiding rock if a rock could walk. I am so grateful for you and that has brought you here. Peace
Do you guys know where “emotional gangster”/“literary thug” are discussed as concepts in her work? I HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THESE CONCEPTS FOR SO LONG and would live to read
"Toni Cade Bambara describes "emotional gangster" in an interview with Claudia Tate. This is published in Claudia Tate's book Black Women Writers at Work, first published in 1985"
This is from another community member, Daphne, who passed this info along to me as I was searching as well. God speed!
Her responsibility to herself exist regardless of the audience
Build your inner nation
4th Paragraph (½)
To root herself in usable truths
To make sure what she knows is true
4th Paragraph (2/2)
“I don’t wish to be useless or dangerous, so I write”
She learned much for her student critique
She wanted to be held accountable
Writing cuts the nonsense
“I need writing to stay on center because I’ll still be somebody's neighbor”
My Recap:
Toni Cade Bambara is a mother, community member, author, cultural ethnographer and more. As a writer, she writes specifically on black experiences. In an interview with Claudia Tate in 1983, she was asked the question “What determines your responsibility to yourself and to your audience?” Within this one question, she has become an aspiration for myself. Her words are felt through my body. Toni goes on to address 4 vital points of what determines her responsibility to herself and her audience.
The first reason is her acknowledgement that "we [black people] are at war", and most notably stated a war of what is Truth. Toni goes on to state that she has a responsibility to state the truth for her and her community, that it is not solely a desire but a necessity. She insinuates that the revolution and resistance to the war demands truth-telling no matter how laboring it may be.
The second reason Toni states is that she writes to lift up ‘usable truths’ and that the writing is not the tool, but one that has much effectiveness in the cocktail of resistance. Her ‘usable truths’ refer to actionable truths, ones that can be integrated into one's' life. Truths that guide people to their agency and sovereignty.
The third reason Toni states is that no matter if there is an audience or not- she would still write. The war Toni refers to, calls for “...building a nation; the inner nation needs building too.” She writes as a tool of self-development, self-honesty, self-discipline, and to remain in her sense of self. The term ‘inner nation’ may refer to a reclamation of self, of the integrated body, mind and soul, of the inner child/mother/father/elder, and things of this nature. Toni insinuates that to build a nation, to build a new world, the work must begin inside our own selves as well.
The fourth reason Toni states is to keep herself accountable. Toni goes on to explain how she must constantly remind her students to critique her, to not fall into the trap of believing whatever she says. Her radical honesty is displayed as she explains how much her words cannot be trusted out of her mouth, but that once it is pen to paper she is sure of what she writes. Toni goes on to say how not writing for her would make her dangerous, as this would mean a lack of accountability. To end off her response to this question, she claims herself a writer and that, “I [Toni] am compelled to write.”
Thank you to Ismatu Gwendolyn, for publicly educating. I relate to so much of Toni’s response to this question, and I hadn’t known about her before. Thank you. I know this is just an outline (the bullets were removed once pasted here) and recap, but any critique is welcome :)
I would like to critique the interpretation of Toni’s line “ I do not think that literature is the primary instrument for social transformation, but I do think it has its potency.” It’s seems like the focus was put on the last part, that literacy does have its potency, which of course is undeniable. However, I can’t help but feel like she wanted the reader to more intensely consider the first part. Reading, both the enjoyment and the ability to do so is on the decline, now more than ever. Those of us who can and do participate through literature, will do so(as we are doing here), but I think the purpose of the line was to draw attention to alternatives. Visual arts, maybe resurrecting oral traditions? The list can be built upon, but I do think it’s a direction worth exploring.
thank you so much for reposting the live! im off social media (hopefully permanently so being able to watch your lives here feels rewarding. i wish you all the best!
Thanks for teaching me so much about Toni Cade Bambara.
I have her quote on my email footer: "The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible." - Toni Cade Bambara
We are at war. An important observation for this moment.
Omg yayy I'm so excited to read this. I'll get right back. Ab yo go grocery shopping. Also ismatu, do you mind reposting the discord link? It's expired
https://discord.gg/CSCFj5tgrR
Thank you so much for sharing these resources <3 <3
This was refreshing in the sense that I cannot afford higher education, and have been trying to curate the power to be self taught. You give me the tools to maintain and improve who I am through and through. It is a breath of fresh air to my (failed) scholarly lungs to listen to a teacher be passionate and stern about their teachings. To listen to a lecture that engages and entrap as well as forces me to question the very nature of the lecture itself. I know you said (and many other teachers have said) that we give too much power to teachers; to check your sources. But you are the source. You are the source of my plunge into self discipline and a scholarly life that doesn't require me to sell my livelihood to professors and school administrators. I want to thank you and also critique you on not giving yourself enough credit. We are asking so much of you and you deserve to be counted as a source of knowledge. All of me wants to delete this and crawl back into ignorance and excuses to not do the work. But as a student, I will do my best to commit to this and to you in these teachings, for myself and for curating my inner nation as well as my outer nation. You give us the power to give ourselves the power to do the work.
I’m glad you decided to post this live!! and I’m really grateful that it is replayable because i have a feeling I’m gonna keep coming back to it. thankyou so much for all your work and all your words! much love<3
i'm making a list of books to read once my semester is over and both toni morrison and toni cade bambara are now on the list. i'm excited to learn from them, thank you for sharing this.
I would like to begin with how much I love and appreciate that you are amplifying the work of Toni Cade Bambara. I've been not searching yet asking for teachers that are 10 steps ahead of me and here you are putting this beauty of a book on a silver platter. Thank you.
I do want to seriously engage with you call for critique yet I'm not sure how much teeth this one has lol. I thinks you're being a little harsh with how you are asking us to remember names and titles. Do not get me wrong, they are important, crucial, and vital pieces of information. And yet, I, as I am sure many of us are, have not trained/ are building the skill/at differing levels of capacity to immediately recall information, least of all when it's new to us. The relationship between learning, neural plasticity, and the full engagement of our senses are interlocked---nothing new lol. For my lil adhd brain that listens as I'm doing dishes, jumping around and laughing and repeating word for word, trying to grasp onto the titles and quotes that I feel in my center, perhaps I'm out of the practice of memorization. Maybe I gotta be prepared to sit down and take notes. Maybe I gotta spell it out on the plate in soap. But please don't harp on me for forgetting. Cuz truth is, I do need to feel the words pass through my lips, expressed through my hands, visualized in my mind's eye, felt in my core. Will I be able to repeat verbatim? Far from it lmao. But will I speak to a friend and say, "hold up, lemme pull up this very relevant essay that highlights Toni Cade Bambara's work" the same way I'm referencing your "we are addicted to our comforts" essay on a weekly basis? Yes, absolutely. I love referencing/returning to your work. Do I freeze and fumble with remembering? Also yes, absolutely.
Separate note, the person I fell in love with bought me a copy of Mutual (lemon)Aid(e) by David/Daniel (?) Spade the first day we spent together in person. That was this past Thursday lol. Thank you for helping bring me closer to me which brings me closer to love.
Much love & peace,
Gi
Ya know what? I feel the frustration deeper now. I am frustrated by others, thus my own, satisfaction with the stagnancy of our attention span, our capacity to listen and retain and develop new information. It is a muscle we build like every other muscle, out of the culmination of our habits. Is my goal is quote word for word the things that matter to me? Not necessarily, but what deny myself the possibility?
I got hit in the face today with a couple things: what is the moon we are all pointing at? Cuz at first I confused writers for the moon. Then I confused theory for the moon. And now, I wonder, how can I articulate the beauty of the moon myself? To close the gap, like my favorites writers do, between ourselves and the moon?
The other thing I was hit with and the thing I tried to articulate in my initial post: The only way to really teach humility is to practice it. Not in a way that matches our "opponent" (cuz I remember the grains of truth is old people's resentment of young people) but in a way that distinguishes humility from humiliation. Yes, I am really moved by your last essay in being young and needing the wisdom of experience and time. The worm that stills wriggles (I should memorize your initial title cuz it was hilarious). I wish the best for you and your family Ismatu. Your words are often a guiding rock if a rock could walk. I am so grateful for you and that has brought you here. Peace
Do you guys know where “emotional gangster”/“literary thug” are discussed as concepts in her work? I HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THESE CONCEPTS FOR SO LONG and would live to read
"Toni Cade Bambara describes "emotional gangster" in an interview with Claudia Tate. This is published in Claudia Tate's book Black Women Writers at Work, first published in 1985"
This is from another community member, Daphne, who passed this info along to me as I was searching as well. God speed!
Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara
Editor: Thabiti Lewis
(with Ismatu Gwendolyn)
Who is Toni Morrison?
Writer
Activist
Author
Black Woman
Multi-talented filmmaker
“I don’t write for white people”
Wrote of black experiences
Started out as an editor
First black woman to get the Nobel Prize - for ‘The Bluest Eye’
Peers with Toni Cade Bambara
Who is Toni Cade Bambara?
On the ground organizer
Cultural Ethnogropher
Mother
Student
Community member
Black Panther Era
Civil Rights Movement
Writer of everyday black experiences
Gorilla My Love
Friend of Toni Morrison
Filmmaker
“Emotional Gangster”
Copy and pasting peoples lives on pages
From New York
“The role of the artist is to make revolution irresistible”
Interview with Claudia Tate (1983)
Context
Bambara has already released
The Black Woman
Feminist anthology
Gorilla My Love
Short stories
Seabirds are Still Alive
Short stories
Effect of Vietnam
Invited to Vietnam
Has Masters degree
What determines your responsibility to yourself and to your audience?
1st Paragraph
“I start with the recognition that we are at war”
Not active war
Ronald Reagan
Violent force submission
War on drugs
‘We’ as in black people
Killings of black political leaders
AIDs crisis
Late 1970s/Early 1980s
War on mental slavery
War against cold war
“The war is also being fought over the truth”
Propaganda
Human nature & potential
Things we have been told is the truth, is actually detrimental
“The truth works”
Effective
Laboring
“Equates criticism for assault”
Critique is a loving and research-driven process
“Equates social responsibility with naive idealism”
“Equated relentless pursuit of knowledge with fanaticism”
We’re at war
Toni has to tell the truth for her and her community
Necessity of truth-telling
2nd Paragraph
“But I do believe [literature] has its potency”
Potency - packs a punch, effectiveness in a cocktail of other things
“I want to lift up some usable truths”
Tangible
Action-based
Ability to put into practice
Frees the mind
Applicable
Forms of resistance
Truth of our agency
Truth from history
Truth of our divinity
Truth telling can be radical
Simple, usable truths
3rd Paragraph
“First and foremost I write for myself”
She stays honest through pencil and paper
She does it for self-development
She does it to stay in touch with herself
“We’re about building a nation; the inner nation needs building to”
Self
Sovereignty
Body
Mind
Reclamation of self
Knowledge
Self understanding
Inner community
Ego
Integrated soul, body, mind
Inner pantheon of people
Close community
Relearning, learning
Individuality and community
Collective self
“Inner nation” implies lands, governance, systems, ideology, shared culture
Her responsibility to herself exist regardless of the audience
Build your inner nation
4th Paragraph (½)
To root herself in usable truths
To make sure what she knows is true
4th Paragraph (2/2)
“I don’t wish to be useless or dangerous, so I write”
She learned much for her student critique
She wanted to be held accountable
Writing cuts the nonsense
“I need writing to stay on center because I’ll still be somebody's neighbor”
My Recap:
Toni Cade Bambara is a mother, community member, author, cultural ethnographer and more. As a writer, she writes specifically on black experiences. In an interview with Claudia Tate in 1983, she was asked the question “What determines your responsibility to yourself and to your audience?” Within this one question, she has become an aspiration for myself. Her words are felt through my body. Toni goes on to address 4 vital points of what determines her responsibility to herself and her audience.
The first reason is her acknowledgement that "we [black people] are at war", and most notably stated a war of what is Truth. Toni goes on to state that she has a responsibility to state the truth for her and her community, that it is not solely a desire but a necessity. She insinuates that the revolution and resistance to the war demands truth-telling no matter how laboring it may be.
The second reason Toni states is that she writes to lift up ‘usable truths’ and that the writing is not the tool, but one that has much effectiveness in the cocktail of resistance. Her ‘usable truths’ refer to actionable truths, ones that can be integrated into one's' life. Truths that guide people to their agency and sovereignty.
The third reason Toni states is that no matter if there is an audience or not- she would still write. The war Toni refers to, calls for “...building a nation; the inner nation needs building too.” She writes as a tool of self-development, self-honesty, self-discipline, and to remain in her sense of self. The term ‘inner nation’ may refer to a reclamation of self, of the integrated body, mind and soul, of the inner child/mother/father/elder, and things of this nature. Toni insinuates that to build a nation, to build a new world, the work must begin inside our own selves as well.
The fourth reason Toni states is to keep herself accountable. Toni goes on to explain how she must constantly remind her students to critique her, to not fall into the trap of believing whatever she says. Her radical honesty is displayed as she explains how much her words cannot be trusted out of her mouth, but that once it is pen to paper she is sure of what she writes. Toni goes on to say how not writing for her would make her dangerous, as this would mean a lack of accountability. To end off her response to this question, she claims herself a writer and that, “I [Toni] am compelled to write.”
Thank you to Ismatu Gwendolyn, for publicly educating. I relate to so much of Toni’s response to this question, and I hadn’t known about her before. Thank you. I know this is just an outline (the bullets were removed once pasted here) and recap, but any critique is welcome :)
hi there, what's the song from 51:00-53:00?
I just requested Toni Cade Bambara from my local library! I'm looking forward to listening to The Salt Eaters.
Halfway through! I'll be back with my notebook & pen. I need my notes to permeate 🧠
I would like to critique the interpretation of Toni’s line “ I do not think that literature is the primary instrument for social transformation, but I do think it has its potency.” It’s seems like the focus was put on the last part, that literacy does have its potency, which of course is undeniable. However, I can’t help but feel like she wanted the reader to more intensely consider the first part. Reading, both the enjoyment and the ability to do so is on the decline, now more than ever. Those of us who can and do participate through literature, will do so(as we are doing here), but I think the purpose of the line was to draw attention to alternatives. Visual arts, maybe resurrecting oral traditions? The list can be built upon, but I do think it’s a direction worth exploring.
Does anyone know where I can get a pdf of Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara?
I have searched for it since this was posted and had no luck.
Help a broke sister out 😩😩😩
thank you so much for reposting the live! im off social media (hopefully permanently so being able to watch your lives here feels rewarding. i wish you all the best!