Gorilla, My Love

In these fifteen stories, written in a style at once ineffable and immediately recognizable, Toni Cade Bambara gives us compelling portraits of a wide range of unforgettable characters, from sassy children to cunning old men, in scenes shifting between uptown New York and rural North Carolina. A young girl suffers her first betrayal. A widow flirts with an elderly blind man against the wishes of her grown-up children. A neighborhood loan shark teaches a white social worker a lesson in responsibility. Sharing the world of Toni Cade Bambara's "straight-up fiction" is as stunning experience.

"Bambara presents situations that build like improvisations on a melody...As drawn with spirit and subtlety, [her characters] are--even in their defeats--a pleasure to watch."--Newsweek