Gorilla, My Love

“One day,” say Sugar, lickin the tomato sauce off her arm, “what I want’s goin to be on the menu. Served up to my taste and all on one plate, so I don’t have to clutter up the whole damn table with a teensy bowl of this and a plate of extra that and a side order of what the hell” (167).

Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara

Each of the fifteen very short stories that make up Gorilla, My Love is transcendent in one way or another. In some stories it’s a moment of harrowing revelation, a crystalized moment of a character’s everyday horror, such as in “The Survivor,” when a woman gives birth: “The dwarf now had metamorphosed into a salami, but she was fooling no one. A salami can be sliced. And she’d come to the right house for sharp blades for the job. As for the metallic monster in the mud encasing, there was dynamite. She’d have to empty her head to get some room for something befitting the sea urchin now howling for her blood” (117). In other stories, the transcendence is more political, as characters oppressed by capitalism and/or racism and/or misogyny assert their power and presence: “She can run if she want to and even run faster. But ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin” (96). In every story, there is sentence-level beauty so exquisite that one can find oneself reading and rereading lines just for the pleasure of the words: “There’s me with nothing much at all on, in her arms, and looking almost like a normal, mortal, everyday-type-baby—raw, wrinkled, ugly. Except that it must be clearly understood straightaway that I sprang into the world full wise and invulnerable and gorgeous like a goddess” (152), or “I look at Inez and she’s sittin so forward I see the tremor caterpillar up her back. And I can’t breathe. Somebody has opened a wet umbrella in my chest” (177).

While no one character or theme unifies all the stories, there are some common and recurring threads. The dynamic character Hazel, narrator of the first story, reappears in later stories at different points in her life, and central themes that run throughout the collection include the simultaneous power and powerlessness of children, the strength and beauty of black people, and the intermingling of the surreal and unknowable with the mundane. A rich and kaleidoscopic collection, Gorilla, My Love is fifteen stories full of energizing characters, entrancing plots, and evocative language.

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