Deep Sightings & Rescue Missions

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 4 NOV. 1996

This compilation of selected short fiction, essays and interviews by (and with) the late Bambara (The Salt Eaters) is her first published work in 14 years, and it provides intriguing insights into this challenging African American writer. The collection includes a warm, appreciative preface by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, who also edited this volume. The six stories feature characters who seek self-definition through their relationships with others: in "Going Critical," a mother slowly dying from radiation poisoning reflects on her relationship with her daughter during a day at the beach; and two boys are puzzled by the community's warm reception of a painter who transforms their favorite landmark and play area in "The War of the Wall." The second section features Bambara's voice much more clearly, as she tackles discursively the social and political concerns, often about race and gender, that animate her fiction. Her film criticism is especially trenchant: she discusses blaxploitation films of the 1960s and '70s, Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust and Spike Lee's School Daze with a sharp eye for their complexity, message and vision. She also questions the assumptions behind our daily language, provoking readers to think in more complicated terms. Bambara (1939-1995) never made any bones about the fact that she viewed writing as a political act. The writings collected here show that, unlike many others, she rarely let her activist motives cripple her aesthetic sense or her intellectual honesty.