The Salt Eaters

Author activist filmmaker and academic Toni Cade Bambara was born in Harlem New York in 1939. Bambaras awardwinning fiction was celebrated during her lifetime for its centring of female characters and its grounding in AfricanAmerican culture spaces and dialects: she would later be inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. She died in Philadelphia in 1995.A long rich dreamA hymn to individual courage a sombre message of hopeA book full of marvelsDaringly brilliantToni Cade Bambaras writing is so great it lifts you off the groundNobody writes with her breathtaking humour empathy ferocity and surrealness ... her observation and humanity are timeless. As a reader I release myself into Ms. Tonis sure and steady hands knowing every part of me will be illuminated by her gazeA book full of marvels New YorkerThe American Deep South in the 1970s. Velma Henry once a formidable political activist has grown weary and disillusioned with the fight for civil rights. She wants to end it all. But then she finds herself in the hands of a Black faith community and the fabled healer Minnie Ransom. As she works through the rage and fear of her traumatic past Velma finds herself changing becoming whole and maybe free. The Salt Eaters is a boldly optimistic profound exploration of memory the self power and Black health as liberation.A hymn to individual courage The Times Literary SupplementHer characters inhabit the nonlinear sacred space and sacred time of traditional African religion The New York Times Book ReviewGB