Blues Ain't No Mockingbird

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1971

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Background

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

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Literary Devices

Important Quotes

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Background

Authorial Context: Toni Cade Bambara

Bambara (1939-1995) was an author, filmmaker, professor, and activist who won the American Book Award in 1981 for her novel The Salt Eaters and was posthumously inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2013. Her work explores themes of racism, feminism, and what it means to be a Black American. In a 1982 interview, Bambara reflected, “When I look back at my work with any little distance, the two characteristics that jump out at me are one, the tremendous capacity for laughter, but also a tremendous capacity for rage” (“Toni Cade Bambara [1939-1995].” Annenberg Learner, American Passages: A Literary Survey). These elements are detectable in “Blues Ain’t No Mockin Bird,” in which the story’s overall tenor is comic even while the characters (in particular, Granny) feel outraged at outrageous situations. Granny’s cumulative trauma and anger are no laughing matter, yet the larger narrative arc and perspective gesture toward a triumph and redemption that typify literary comedy. Likewise, the county men’s covert racism is hardly a joke, yet Bambara crafts a risible image in these characters’ absurd combination of smarm and hubris.

Bambara was active in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which sought to cultivate Black pride and create new cultural institutions. Bambara was also part of the new Black feminism movement, editing the anthology The Black Woman (1970), which featured work by Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall, Nikki Giovanni, and herself, among others. Bambara often centered narratives and essays around Black women and girls, using African American English to render a world that celebrated and was authentic to Black culture. “Blues Ain’t No Mockin Bird” is a shining example of Bambara’s work and background, as it is told from the viewpoint of a young Black girl using her own dialect.

Bambara moved from New York to Georgia in 1974 and became an integral part of Atlanta’s Black Arts Movement. She was writer-in-residence at the Neighborhood Arts Center and taught at Spelman College, Emory University, and Atlanta University. She also helped organize and record information related to the Atlanta child murders. After a decade in Atlanta, Bambara moved to Philadelphia, where she co-produced and served as narrator for the 1987 documentary The Bombing of Osage Avenue. Before her death from colon cancer in 1995, Bambara continued to serve as a mentor for female video artists and even read her work at a women’s prison. Her last project was the 1995 documentary W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices.

Cultural Context: The Black Arts Movement and Black Feminism

Malcolm X, prominent civil rights activist and American Muslim leader, was assassinated in 1965. The next day, the poet LeRoi Jones (later to rename himself Amiri Baraka) vowed to leave the Lower East Side of New York and move to Harlem. There, he founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre, and the Black Arts Movement began. The movement sought to bring Black Power into the arts, offering a way for Black artists and writers to celebrate Black culture and lifestyles, to show the beauty in being Black, and to express themselves on their own terms. Inspired by Baraka, other cultural institutions began to appear across the United States, such as Chicago’s Third World Press and New York’s National Black Theatre (“The Black Arts Movement.” Poetry Foundation).

Alongside the Black Arts Movement, Black feminism was emerging. Writers like Maya Angelou and Alice Walker broke new ground writing about Black women. Influenced by the movement, Bambara’s work—including “Blues Ain’t No Mockin Bird”—focuses on African American culture and its influences, and features female characters, narrators, and voices written in vernacular and dialect. By centering female voices, Bambara’s work is often described as feminist. However, in her 1970 essay “On the Issue of Roles,” Bambara wrote, “Perhaps we need to let go of all notions of manhood and femininity and concentrate on Blackhood”—the essay was published in The Black Woman, an anthology featuring feminist authors in the Black Arts Movement. The poems, essays, and stories in this book sought to convey the realities of being a Black woman, and to celebrate that existence by rooting the pieces in Black traditions, culture, and language.