I do not think that literature is the primary instrument for social transformation, but I do think it has potency. So I work to tell the truth about people’s lives; I work to celebrate struggle, to applaud the tradition of struggle in our community, to bring to center stage all those characters, just ordinary folks on the block, who’ve been waiting in the wings, characters we thought we had to ignore because they weren’t pimp-flashy or hustler-slick or because they didn’t fit easily into previously acceptable modes or stock types. I want to lift up some usable truths ...
ATTRIBUTION:
Toni Cade Bambara (b. 1939), African American fiction writer. Black Women Writers at Work, ch. 2, by Claudia Tate (1983).
