Those Bones Are Not My Child.

Toni Cade Bambara. Those Bones Are Not My Child. New York: Pantheon, 1999. 676 pp. $27.50.

In the preface to The Black Woman, Toni Cade Bambara remarked that the work to be done in and around Black women's literature and feminism was "a lifetime's work." Certainly, Bambara's life and work stand as testimony to her steadfast dedication to the promotion of African American women's voices in literature, feminism, and film. Published in 1970, The Black Woman came to serve as one of the founding texts of that decade's emerging Black feminist movement. With Bambara's untimely death in 1995, the world lost an example of the literary possibilities that emerge when profound talent and otherworldly spirituality come together. Fortunately, in 1996, Toni Morrison published Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions--a collection of both published and previously unpublished "fiction, essays, and conversations" by and with Bambara. With this text, Morrison insured the enduring presence of Bambara's literary and critical voice.

In Those Bones Are Not My Child, Morrison continues her preservation of Bambara's legacy with another posthumously published work of Bambara's that, in a fictionalized account, revisits the painful era of what became known as the Atlanta child murders. Based on over a decade of Bambara's firsthand research into a series of puzzling disappearances and murders of Black youth in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Bambara explores the ways in which government power and politics, communal paranoia, and personal suffering transform the Rawis family. Bambara focuses primarily on Marzala (Zala) Rawls, a mother of three whose son Sundiata (Sonny) was kidnapped. With the help of her estranged husband Nathaniel Spencer (Spence) and an eclectic mix of volunteers, Zala sets out to unearth the truth behind Sonny's questionable disappearance.

This novel should be of interest to scholars concerned with what happens at the intersection of history and literature, issues of Black masculinity, and the formation and function of grassroots political organizations, Vietnam, and trauma. Further, Bambara's novel opens a vital conversation about the function and limits of fiction revisioning history.

The prologue to Their Bones Are Not My Child postdates the novel's action, yet anticipates the distressed tone that runs throughout the book. Peppered with allusions to various political organizations and government agencies, the prologue allows readers to experience the development of Zala's paranoia, which began when Sonny disappeared almost a year earlier. In the first two chapters, "First Light and the Shape of Things" and "Connections: Convention Bucks, Investigation Flacks," Bambara takes us through the initial phases of Zala's search and chronicles her transformation from shocked mother to the empowered activist who confronts government agencies that trivialize Sonny's disappearance. The following pair of chapters, "The Key is in the Boot" and "The State of the Art," expound on Zala's efforts with more extensive characterizations of her two other children, Kenti and Kofi. These sections not only allow readers to follow the development of Zala's efforts, but they also expose the effects that her time-co nsuming search for Sonny has on the rest of her family. In "Foxglove and Tannia Leaves," Bambara offers a close-up of Zala's activist group as it lobbies for legal support, reviews racist films for insight into the minds of the kidnappers, and conducts searches of locales that may have been implicated in the homicidal rampage. "Bee Pollen and Oil of Evening Primrose" marks a dramatic shift in events, as the family strives to reconcile life before the kidnapping and after Sonny is found. The novel culminates with "Bones on the Roof"--a section that, while building on the familial tensions of the previous chapter, compels strong readerly responses yet provides no resolution.

Bambara uses a wide range of literary devices in Those Bones Are Not My Child, both traditional and experimental, which enhance the reader's aural and visual experience with the text. The most striking of these is her handling of narrative voice and her camera-like use of narrative perspective. Bambara manipulates the voices in the narrative from character to character, imbuing each with a distinctive tone that becomes increasingly recognizable in the course of the reading. To be sure, Bambara acts as a conduit for her text's many voices, from those of politicians to those of grieving parents. Her polyphonic approach validates each and offers a more diverse interpretation of these grim events.

Readers familiar with Bambara's work in film will notice how, from time to time, the narrative imitates a camera's movement. She grants some characters a sweeping glance from this "lens" while she portrays others with exacting close-ups. At some points, this narrative "eye" seems to pan the city, fly overhead, converge on representative individuals and groups, and allow us to hear their voices. This narrative is, at once, first- and third-person. What results is a panoptic montage that reconciles a narrative that occasionally appears disjointed.

One of the most compelling aspects of this novel inheres in the trauma implicit in its title: Those Bones Are Not My Child. Although a fictionalized account of the historical events, the novel transcends these textual boundaries to produce a story that conveys an eerie expectation of the worst in its outcome alongside a lingering hope for the best. Like Zala, who, with every ring of the telephone or knock at the door fears news of Sonny's death or anticipates word of his return, readers experience feelings of trepidation with each turn of the page. Ominous fear and suspenseful hopefulness plant themselves within the recesses of our consciousness. In implicating our responses this way, Bambara marries physical response to textual information--a feat that transforms an encounter with the book from readerly task to somatic experience.

Although Bambara succeeds in creating a significant revisionist historical document, her use of the details of her extensive research at times becomes a distraction. In a non-fiction work, such details might have been expected, even demanded. But in a work of fiction they seem to push the novel beyond the boundaries of its focus.

The most moving insights to emerge from this novel come through the voices of Sonny's younger siblings, Kenti and Kofi. In some tense and touching moments in the story, Kenti and Kofi's poignant commentary conjures the cadence of the adolescent characters in Bambara's renowned collection of short stories Gorilla, My Love. But while Bambara's gift for painting children with depth, complexity, and tenderness extends to characters like Zala, Paulette, and Spencer, the sheer number of secondary characters in this novel makes it virtually impossible for her to give full attention to the development of others. One is left to imagine that, had Bambara lived to rework the narrative personally, she might have revised such shortcomings. Ultimately, however, Those Bones Are Not My Child stands as a testament to Bambara's facility as a writer as well as her willingness to push the limits of fiction, politics, and history.