The Salt Eaters
By (Author) Toni Cade Bambara
Penguin Books Ltd
Penguin Classics
5th January 2022
7th October 2021
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Narrative theme: Politics
813.54
Paperback
256
Width 130mm, Height 198mm, Spine 15mm
193g
The tale of a woman transformed by a Black healing community in 1970s America, publishing for the first time in Penguin Modern Classics 'A book full of marvels' New Yorker The 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 Supplement 'Her characters inhabit the nonlinear, sacred space and sacred time of traditional African religion' The New York Times Book Review
A long, rich dream -- Anne Tyler
A hymn to individual courage, a sombre message of hope * Times Literary Supplement *
A book full of marvels * New Yorker *
Daringly brilliant -- Gloria Hull
Toni Cade Bambara's writing is so great it lifts you off the ground * New Statesman *
Nobody writes with her breathtaking humour, empathy, ferocity, and surrealness ... her observation and humanity are timeless. As a reader, I release myself into Ms. Toni's sure and steady hands, knowing every part of me will be illuminated by her gaze -- Adjoa Andoh * Glamour *
Author, activist, filmmaker and academic Toni Cade Bambara was born in Harlem, New York, in 1939. Bambara's award-winning fiction was celebrated during her lifetime for its centring of female characters and its grounding in African-American culture, spaces and dialects; she would later be inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. She died in Philadelphia in 1995.