Raymond's Run Flyer
By Toni Bambara, Created By Ana Watson
Toni Bambara
Toni Cade Bambara was born in New York City to parents Walter and Helen (Henderson) Cade. She grew up in Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant (Brooklyn), Queens and New Jersey, NJ. In 1970 she changed her name to include the name of a West African ethnic group,Bambara.Bambara was active in the 1960s Black Arts movement and the emergence of black feminism. Her anthology The Black Woman(1970), with poetry, short stories, and essays by Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Paule Marshall and herself, as well as work by Bambara's students from the SEEK program, was the first feminist collection to focus on African-American women. Tales and Stories for Black Folk (1971) contained work by Langston Hughes, Ernest J. Gaines, Pearl Crayton, Alice Walker and students. She wrote the introduction for another groundbreaking feminist anthology by women of color, This Bridge Called My Back (1981), edited byGloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga. While Bambara is often ascribed as a "feminist," in her chapter entitled "On the Issue of Roles", she writes: "Perhaps we need to let go of all notions of manhood and femininity and concentrate on Blackhood."
Raymond's Run plot
Raymond's Run Plot
"Raymond's Run" plunges its readers immediately into the world of its narrator Hazel, known in her neighborhood as "Squeaky," a young black girl verging on adolescence. We meet Hazel walking down a street in Harlem with her older—but mentally younger— brother, Raymond. While she guards her mentally challenged brother from dashing into the traffic or soaking himself in the gutters, Hazel resolutely keeps up breathing exercises to train herself as a runner. Known in the neighborhood as "the fastest thing on two feet" she is determined to maintain her reputation by winning the fifty-yard dash at the school May Day track meet the following day. Unlike her schoolmate Cynthia, who pretends to be nonchalant about her abilities, Hazel works hard to be the best and does not care who knows it.
Comments
Raymond's Run was a great story. The character Squeay is much like me. She's fast like me, but i have some compitition. you should read it!!!