56 pages • 1 hour read
Toni Cade BambaraThe Salt Eaters
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1980A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Mental and Public Health Conditions in the Black Community
Content Warning: This novel includes extensive discussions of mental health conditions, especially suicide. This guide refers to, but does not quote, some of the author’s uses of the n-word. The novel also contains references to assault on women, sexual assault, and blackface.
The Salt Eaters centers on the spiritual healing of Velma’s mental health crisis. Velma ends up in the infirmary after an attempt to die by suicide. One line that she thinks multiple times during the healing is “I might have died” (7). She considers a potential future that includes her death, which echoes Fred’s morbid fantasies of driving his bus into the marshes and killing everyone aboard. Velma’s mental health condition does not physically harm the people around her, but it negatively impacts her loved ones. Her husband “[had] grown afraid for her. [...] Then he’d grown afraid of her” (162). However, Obie’s extramarital affair and his potential gathering of guns at the academy add to Velma’s psychological concerns. For her, as a Black activist, “Life [is] a danger” (78). Her mental state is affected by having to fight against racism and for her community, and it also reflects the fractured and troubled state of Black activism and mindsets in the 1970s.
The dialogue between Minnie (Velma’s faith healer) and Old Wife (Minnie’s spirit guide) explores the theme of mental health conditions. They speak in the realm of “The Mind,” where they have built a fountain and chapel. Minnie’s healing work with Yoruban gods and her Christian guide can be compared to Velma’s psychic gifts. While Velma has only experienced foresight, she might be able to venture into the realm of the mind like Minnie with training if it is the right path for her. Minnie describes Velma’s struggle to embrace her gifts: “Seem like they just don’t know how to draw up the powers from the deep like before” (44). Instead of accessing these old powers, Velma’s self splits, and her journey out of her crisis is dependent on unifying the parts of her self. This reflects the Black community’s trouble with channeling its past, even though doing so is crucial for unifying across gender, class, and spiritual lines.
Velma’s condition is described in terms of visions that include a woman. Velma does not want to look at this woman at first. She notices that the woman uses “the same brand of sandalwood soap” as her (259). This hints that the woman is Velma through the sense of smell; later, she looks into the woman’s face and it is revealed to be her. However, the book focuses on the delay before this acceptance. One reason Velma hesitates to embrace all the parts of herself is that “people sometimes believed that it was safer to live with complaints, was necessary to cooperate with grief, was all right to become an accomplice in self-ambush” (107). She resists change at first because it is frightening. Her healing journey also emphasizes that one cannot heal oneself; Velma relies on a group of Black women to facilitate her healing, emphasizing the role of community care in both individual and communal healing.
Velma’s transformation is described in terms of death and rebirth, symbolized by shedding a cocoon. Velma overcomes her fear with the repeated memory of a moment when “she’d never been more cared for” (225). At this moment, Velma is surrounded by family and friends while recovering in bed after running in the rain—it is when she first starts to experience her psychic gifts after a recital. This memory links past and present moments of community care. The novel ends when Velma is psychically reborn and throws off Minnie’s shawl like a cocoon. Like a caterpillar liquefying in a cocoon before emerging as a butterfly, Velma also needs to confront a death of sorts before coming out whole on the other side. This represents the resolution of her mental health crisis, which is the main conflict of the novel. Part of this healing involves a change in perspective; her (and the Black community’s) psychological state can be seen either as an illness, represented by Velma’s burnout and attempt to die by suicide, or as a place of empowerment with her psychic powers.
Fracturing in Black Activism
The fracturing of Velma’s self is echoed in the splintering of the activist groups in the text, making Velma’s healing journey symbolic of the care needed to repair divides in Black activism. Sophie thinks about how Velma “[had] found a home amongst the workers who called themselves ‘political.’ And she’d found a home amongst the workers who called themselves ‘psychically adept.’ But somehow she’d fallen into the chasm that divided the two camps” (147). Before Velma can work on healing the divide between the factions, she has to heal her splintered self. Sophie talks to Obie about the different camps at the academy: “Now there was a Babel of paths, of plans” (92). This allusion to the biblical Tower of Babel asserts that activist groups, once united and ambitious in their cause, have been divided and cast away from each other. Velma and the Black community are in chaos, and the book explores different methods of coming together.
One faction that Velma finds especially troubling is the group that is collecting guns at the academy. This is an action Obie might have been able to prevent but didn’t. This group represents differing opinions about violent and nonviolent tactics in 1970s Black liberation. For his part, Obie wants to not only bring together the spiritual and political factions at the academy but to unite the academy with Women for Action. He states, “The work was the same: to develop, to de-mystify, to build, to consolidate and escape” (93). The goals of the groups are similar, but Obie reveals his own misogyny when reflecting negatively on the women whom he impregnated but who did not bear his children. Obie finds these women’s expressions of reproductive autonomy a threat to his masculinity. This indicates that even if he agrees with feminist ideology, he would need to overcome his sexism to be a true ally.
Likewise, within the Women for Action group, there are debates over things like astrology and labor politics. Ruby asks Jan, “Don’t anybody talk political anymore, talk Black anymore? If it ain’t degree degree, it’s job job, boogie boogie, or some esoteric off-the-wall sun/moon shit” (236). She describes the spiritual and material divide in the academy as well as among other activists. This debate is echoed in Inez and Cecile’s debate about Palma’s astrological sign on the bus. Ruby and Jan embody different approaches to activism, often referred to as theory versus praxis. Intellectual, spiritual, and on-the-ground tactics are all vital to political organizing, but some prioritize one over the others. The content and structure of the novel reflect this fracturing, too, as it is separated into plotlines about Black activism and African spirituality.
Velma does achieve a form of wholeness by the end of the novel, which is reflected in how different groups of women come together. At the end of the novel, Women for Action members Ruby and Jan are in the same outdoor café as Velma’s friends who take the bus. The rainstorm results in people “crowding together, sharing edges of chairs with strangers, offering bits of scalloped shadow from the oilskin roofing” (245). Before the storm, the two groups of women hesitated to approach one another, even though they suspected everyone knew Velma. Once the rain clears, Campbell notices how the different groups of women join up at one table. He looks toward “the other big table where Jan and her stubby friend sat with the media women” (280). Other characters are also in the process of coming together at the end of the novel. For instance, Obie approaches the infirmary to be with Velma.
However, there is not a clear resolution to all of the splintering. It is suggested that all strands of Blackness must come together to properly channel the community’s identity and history, and this coming together will be through the agency of women. Velma and Minnie have the psychic power to summon Black history and spirituality; the true sense of Black oneness and community will be established by women, just as women channel African heritage and spirits in the novel.
Uterine Issues, Sexist Oppression, and Reproductive Justice
Women characters in the novel struggle with issues related to their gender identity broadly and reproductive justice specifically. Velma recalls “M’Dear’s class about the master brain being in the uterus, where all ideas sprung from and were nurtured and released to the lesser brain in the head” (271). Velma agrees with this sentiment but also has issues with menstruation and miscarriage. She struggles to find menstrual products in the “Patterson suite,” where a political meeting is held, and has to resort to using “rally flyers” to absorb her blood. This physical issue distracts her during the meeting, her blood seeping into the political materials symbolizing the way women are not considered or represented in organizing spaces. Another example is Velma’s miscarriage, which added to the stress that led to her mental health crisis, especially because Obie was upset about it. Obie reflects on the way women “kept killing his babies" (99), representing the idea that women’s bodies are objects to be used by men. By contrast, the healing rituals and African spiritual symbols in the text emphasize uteruses as culture bearers for the Black community. Since the community is fractured by sexism, women struggle with sexist oppression.
Some of the book’s tensions between men and women are rooted in reproductive justice. Minnie says, “Check the moon, Old Wife [...] something’s up in a fearsome way between the men and the women” (62), with the moon representing both the spiritual elements of Minnie’s work and menstruation. The tension she senses is seen in several moments throughout the novel, like the instances of pregnancy, miscarriage, and menstruation. The text specifically discusses the uterus in some instances, reflecting feminist issues in the 1970s. This includes the legalization of abortion in 1973, but Black feminists focused on different aspects of reproductive justice, such as the rates of involuntary sterilization in the Black community. Since chattel slavery, the US government had a great deal of control over Black women’s fertility, and Black liberation movements sought bodily autonomy for Black women.
Other tensions are rooted in patriarchy and sexism more broadly. For instance, the Women for Action, including Velma with her pad made of flyers, call out the men for expecting women to take on more work than them during the Patterson suite meeting. Fred, reflecting on his own troubled romantic relationship as well as the group of Velma’s friends on the bus, thinks, “Women” (67). This is echoed in how one of the healing group members, Cora, says in exasperation, “Men” (109). This is in reference to Dr. Meadows leaving the room, safety issues at the plant, and the group collecting guns. The women in The Salt Eaters frequently reflect on the irony that Black liberation does not inherently result in equality between Black men and women.
Through the book’s conclusion, Bambara asserts that men and women in the Black community will need to come together to solve the community’s problems, and this has to start with the men respecting women and their contributions and skills. The novel suggests that Black people should be united in their Blackness, but men are preventing this and fracturing it. Uteruses are a site of oppression but should be a site of agency and reproductive, fertility-based justice. Bambara envisions a Black community reborn, not dying and ill. Velma’s attempt to die by suicide suggests the Black community at first made Black women turn against themselves, but her rebirth implies it is on the right path.
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