I do not think literature is the primary instrument for social transformation, but I do think it has its potency. So I work to tell the truth about people’s lives; I work to celebrate struggle, to applaud the tradition of struggle in our community… like the fact that the simple act of cornrowing one’s hair is radical in a society that defines beauty as blonde tresses blowing in the wind;
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It would be dishonest, though, to end my comments there. First and foremost, I write for myself. Writing has been for a long time my major tool for self-instruction and self-development. I try to stay honest through pencil and paper. I run off at the mouth a lot. I’ve a penchant for flambyoant perforance. I exaggerate to the point of hysteria. I cannot always be trusted with my mouth open. But when I sit down with the notebooks, I am absolutely serious about what I see, sense, know. I write for the same reason I keep track of my dreams, for the same reason I meditate and practice being still— to stay in touch with me and not let too much slip by me. We’re about building a nation; the inner nation needs building, too.
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I began writing in a serious way… when I got into teaching. It was a way to keep track of myself, to monitor myself. I’m a very seductive teacher, persuasive, infectious, overwhelming, irresistible. I worked hard in the classroom to teach students to critique me constantly, to protect themselves from my nonsense; but let’s face it, the teacher-student relationship we’ve been trained with is very colonial in nature. It’s fraught with dangers. The power given to teachers over students’ minds, students’ spirits, students’ development— my God! To rise above that, to insist of myself and of them that we refashion that relationship along progressive lines demanded a great deal of courage, imagination, energy, and will. Writing was a way to “hear” myself, check myself. Writing was/is an act of discovery.”
excerpts from Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara, TCB responds to the question, “What determines your responsibility to yourself and your audience?” posed in an interview by Claudia Tate, 1983
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