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Those Bones Are Not My Child

Toni Cade Bambara

3.64 · Rating details · 348 ratings · 57 reviews

Written over a span of twelve years, and edited by Toni Morrison, who calls Those Bones Are Not My Child the author's magnum opus, Bambara's last novel leaves us with an enduring and revelatory chronicle of an American nightmare.

In a suspenseful novel of uncommon depth and intensity, Toni Cade Bambara renders a harrowing portrait of a city under siege. Having elected its f ...more

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Paperback, 688 pages

Published October 24th 2000 by Vintage (first published 1999)

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May 27, 2008 Maureen rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: novel

There is no doubt that this is a hard book to read. It takes place in Atlanta during the time of the Atlanta Child Murders. I guess I like this book more than most people, because I feel that Bambara did a good job of capturing the fear and tumult that Atlanta experienced. I still have my "Save the Children" button, that many people took to wearing as some sign of solidarity during those traumatic times. It didn't matter, though, we were all looking at each other with wary eyes. Bambara also dep ...more

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Jan 04, 2015 Courtney H. rated it liked it

Bambara died before she could finish this book, written and researched over a 15-year period. I would have liked to see what Bambara might have done with the editing process herself. Her friend, Toni Morrison, did the final edits, and it is clear that Morrison felt uncomfortable about making the cuts or decisions that the author herself might have made. I don't blame Morrison--Bambara is a master, and this was the work of a lifetime. How do you cut her words down? But I can't help but think that Bambara died before she could finish this book, written and researched over a 15-year period. I would have liked to see what Bambara might have done with the editing process herself. Her friend, Toni Morrison, did the final edits, and it is clear that Morrison felt uncomfortable about making the cuts or decisions that the author herself might have made. I don't blame Morrison--Bambara is a master, and this was the work of a lifetime. How do you cut her words down? But I can't help but think that Bambara would have been harder on herself than Morrison was on her memory. The issue isn't the writing itself. Every passage is beautifully written. But the result is a sprawling novel of 700+ pages, which detail the lives and histories of several characters; intimately portray the dissolution of a family in the wake of a young child's disappearance; harshly critique the racism and problematic politics that allowed a city and a country to turn a blind eye to the murder and disappearance of dozens of Black children (including 3 three-year olds, murdered in the bombing of a daycare and the kidnapping of a number of pre-teen and teenage children from their neighborhoods); and explore the complex social movement of victims' families that developed to demand answers and seek justice themselves. Every passage was well written, but not every passage belonged in the same book. While we got detailed portraits of Sonny's parents, we have to wonder if Bambara would have kept in all the asides relating to their histories and daily struggles prior to Sonny's disappearance.
I think there were at least two distinct works in here: the fictional but very realistic and unapologetic look at a family in turmoil following their son's disappearance during the Atlanta child murders; and a non-fiction true crime novel, an In Cold Blood seeped not only in the murders, but in the politics and racism of a country that pretended to be post-racial while ignoring the hate crimes and serial murders that were destroying a community. I think both books are sorely needed. But the amalgamation didn't quite work. Bambara tried to frame her social and political critiques in the framework of a fictional story, which was awkward and cost us valuable opportunities to glean insight into the creation of STOP and of Atlanta politics. At the same time, it also often took us away from Marzala's story, so that hundreds of pages might go by without mention of the boy who's disappearance led the story off. It made it difficult to maintain an emotional connection to her fictional characters, and I think did a disservice to Marzala.
The Atlanta child murders are an ugly piece of our history, one that we know too little about and as a country tend to like to forget. The injustice cost dozens of lives, left families without answers, a man in prison who may or may not have been involved in the crimes, and ignored the hate crimes that were mixed up in this terrible period in history. It is no wonder that Bambara found fuel for 15 years of research; it is no wonder that her draft could not be contained in a slender volume. But I wish she had more time with it, more time to shape the stories that need to be told and remembered. ...more

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Feb 10, 2020 Sookie rated it really liked it

Shelves: literary-fiction

If Netflix (and other media creators) can stop masturbating to the likes of Ted Bundy and the same bunch for five minutes, focus can shift to horrific crimes like the one in this book, that victims' families are still fighting justice for. These victims deserve our attention. ...more

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Mar 03, 2009 Colleen rated it it was ok

Interesting subject, tedious presentation.

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Aug 05, 2015 J.E. rated it really liked it

“Lady, Black boys getting killed in the South just ain’t news.”
“And girls,” she inserted. “And women and men.”
“I know how you feel, but I don’t make network policy. The news of the moment is Iran, when it’s not the election or stories about international terrorism.”

Sounds like it could be this morning’s news. But it’s 1980 in Atlanta, and more than forty black children have in fact been murdered, in a pattern that can be traced around “the city too busy to hate.” This novel, Toni Cade Bambara’s “Lady, Black boys getting killed in the South just ain’t news.”
“And girls,” she inserted. “And women and men.”
“I know how you feel, but I don’t make network policy. The news of the moment is Iran, when it’s not the election or stories about international terrorism.”

Sounds like it could be this morning’s news. But it’s 1980 in Atlanta, and more than forty black children have in fact been murdered, in a pattern that can be traced around “the city too busy to hate.” This novel, Toni Cade Bambara’s masterwork, follows an estranged mother and father whose son goes missing just as the killings are finally becoming news.

I was a child in 1980, about the same age as Zala and Spence’s younger son. I was daily reminded of the U.S. hostages held in Iran, but I had no idea that in the next state, the deadly backdrop to this book was unfolding. Atlanta was supposed to be the Black Mecca of the New South, progressive and free. It had a black mayor and new black police officers; one of them, Sergeant B. J. Greaves, is a character in the novel. I never saw a black police officer the whole time I was growing up—or a woman—but I knew such things were possible, because they were characters in books.

It was in reading those same books at school that I first came across fiction by Toni Cade Bambara. “Raymond’s Run” is one of those unforgettable stories that has stayed with me since childhood. So to discover this big novel, published after her death in 1995, is a real pleasure.

A pleasure, despite the horror that is at the heart of the story. For Bambara’s writing is so beautiful, illuminating the most everyday details of a family’s life, which will never be everyday again. She is in absolute command of her characters’ perspective, the viewpoints of both parents, the younger son and daughter. Through their increasingly desperate efforts to find out what happened to Sonny and the other children, Bambara shows us a city in the round. The upwardly mobile Atlantans, the Vietnam vets like Spence, elderly black residents who have seen it all. Whatever their class or background, none of these characters are victims, except in the true sense of being victims of crime. They never whine. They have confidence and pride.

Because of the richness of detail with which she writes, Bambara does the best thing I think a novelist can do: she takes the reader into another world. I see the banana magnet on the car ashtray, the kids at the boys’ club, the African-identified activists in the park. I am back in the time, though not the place, of my childhood, its phones, furniture, school buildings. The horror of what is happening to the children is more real, not because Bambara writes violence (which is never gratuitous) but because she places it in the ordinary world, the one we live in.

Bambara was an important figure in both feminism and African-American studies, as well as an accomplished filmmaker. All of this comes through in a highly cinematic novel. We learn a lot as readers, but she is never preachy. Instead, she sets the story in the context of other events of the time: the Harvey Milk assassinations, the Jim Jones massacre, David Duke and Jesse Helms, the struggle of Black Britons and South Africans. The mystery grows so big that the main characters almost feel lost, as they surely must have in real life—yet Bambara regains the thread of their story just when we’ve given it up for lost.

From beyond the grave, Bambara tells a human story, at a time when we cannot be reminded too often that “Black Lives Matter.” To all of us, because we are part of each other, and part of the same world. Last week* many RedState activists were calling a broadcaster who challenged Donald Trump a whore and a lesbian, and the man in the White House a “nigger.” I only wish the country of this novel felt more distant than it does.

*http://www.economist.com/news/united-...
...more

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May 11, 2020 Marcos rated it it was amazing

"While we may despise the treachery of lies, we seem to fear the squalor of the truth even more. Let us bow our heads and pray for the strength to overcome our own fearfulness...The government invented the term credibility gap to cover the distance between what officials know and what they tell us".

One of the most horrifying and saddest books about racial injustice I've read- this is the story of parents Zala and Spence who are looking for the son Sonny, probably abducted by a series of serial m ...more

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Jun 02, 2015 Alexa rated it it was ok

Shelves: fab-15, summer-15

This started off beautifully, yet I found it degenerating into a confusing mess. At times it is a glorious weaving, and at other times it’s a giant knot of confusing threads with no coherent whole. Her weaving is beautiful, in fact her individual threads are beautiful, but all too often I was left confused and frustrated. She is at her best when writing of the individual lives, the interpersonal relationships, the meaning of family. She is at her worst attempting to convey facts, hints of possib ...more

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Nov 12, 2019 Hadley rated it liked it

Toni Cade Bambara, a writer, documentary filmmaker and screenwriter, gives True Crime readers a unique viewpoint of the real Atlanta Child Murders. Bambara mostly writes from the eyes of Marzala, a mother of three whose oldest son goes missing during one of the worst murder sprees in Atlanta's history. Marzala and her family were not actual people during this time- - - all of them are based off of parents and siblings of the real victims. Not soon after Marzala does everything she can with the p ...more

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Feb 17, 2014 Latiffany rated it did not like it

I wrote a long review about this book and magically it disappeared. I'm taking that as a sign to be brief about my feelings regarding this book and move on to the next novel that awaits me.

This isn't a good read. It is way too long and rather than focusing on the plot it reads like research on the Atlanta Child Murders instead of the novel that it presents itself to be. The characters seem to be thrown in as needed and the main character-the missing son- is rarely even focused on. The book comp ...more

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Sep 10, 2020 Mentai rated it really liked it

Shelves: transforming-the-world

Much of Bambara's writing here is breathtaking and she lifts injustice and personal pain beyond the mere documenting of her research on these cases and their aftermath. But the work also suffers from lack of clear editing and should have been much shorter. Nevertheless her opus has stayed with me, the musical language and evocation of Atlanta. ...more

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Jun 17, 2018 Kaitlyn rated it really liked it

I do not read mystery genre style books often, as it’s just not my interest, and this book definitely had qualities of mystery fiction that I find hard to follow - BUT this book is amazing. It’s speculative non-fiction. Filling in the gaps and view of a case that is an absolute miscarriage of justice and really makes me wonder how Black folk in America are not angrier. Bambara’s writing is timeless, using the context of just one case where Black voices are disregarded and the value of Black live ...more

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Nov 02, 2019 Rachel added it

Shelves: poc-authors, women-writers, usa-authors

I don’t feel like it is fair to rate this book as I only read 200 pages of it but i just could not get engaged in it. It didn’t capture my interest and I found myself looking on my phone or getting otherwise distracted.

It follows the quotidian life of 2 parents after their son goes missing and the racism they face trying to get the police to do anything about it. I think it is just too slow paced for my liking right now although the dragging monotony of life without any answers or progression e ...more

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Apr 06, 2020 Peacegal rated it liked it

This is an in-depth novel set in Atlanta, GA, in the early 1980s...a terrifying time when African American children were going missing and murdered and it was basically being swept under the rug by authorities.

The writing style was unusual. It has a way of talking around scenes that I've seen in other books and which never fails to confuse me. I don't know if it's me or what, but I had difficulty trying to discern who was speaking and what the setting was.

The writing style is incredibly detail ...more

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Apr 09, 2020 Vel Veeter rated it it was amazing

There’s a little live-blogging happening in this review as I work my way through the book. The book is very very good, oddly not nearly as depressingly sad as I thought it would be (though very depressingly sad), and much more complex, nuanced, intelligent and erudite than what I thought the book was going to be based on the description. Not to say that I didn’t think Toni Cade Bambara was capable of such a book, but I just didn’t realize that’s the book I was picking up.

The book takes places mo There’s a little live-blogging happening in this review as I work my way through the book. The book is very very good, oddly not nearly as depressingly sad as I thought it would be (though very depressingly sad), and much more complex, nuanced, intelligent and erudite than what I thought the book was going to be based on the description. Not to say that I didn’t think Toni Cade Bambara was capable of such a book, but I just didn’t realize that’s the book I was picking up.

The book takes places mostly in 1980 in Atlanta during the child murders that killed 28 people, mostly children along with a few adults. It’s a focus of the second season of Mindhunter I believe, but I haven’t watched that yet, and it’s the focus of books by James Baldwin, Tayari Jones, and plenty of others. It’s also almost completely erased from the white mainstream consciousness, to the degree that I didn’t even know about these murders (which happened right around time of my birth) despite having family in Atlanta and visiting fairly often as a kid. I take responsibility for my own ignorance on the topic and am working to correct that now, but I really do believe that this is not a topic white people or white history really discusses much, and this book explores this in part.

The novel itself takes places mainly within a family where one of the children has gone missing — speculation is high on all fronts about what explains his disappearance. The mother and father believe he has been taken (they are not together any longer but spend weeks and weeks searching and protesting and agitating in the local movement), the police believe that his disappearance like most child disappearances is a runaway situation, something they inherently believe about missing Black children anyway, and want this to be true because of the burden it seemingly lifts from their shoulders.

The book also spends a few chapters in second person with you taking on the role of a mother waiting for her child to return home, only overdue by a few hours.

The reason the book is a little less known than many of the other texts on this subject is because Toni Cade Bambara died before publishing it and it becomes a project that Toni Morrison helped to bring to publication. The book is also very long (just under 700 pages) and while the text is heavy (gravity wise) and dense at times, the book is incredibly readable, but I think this combination of factors plus the politics of racism and sexism, and the erasure of these events in wider culture probably made this book less viable as a product. ...more

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Jul 13, 2011 J rated it it was amazing

Shelves: dekalb-county-library-has

(FROM JACKET)"Those Bones Are Not My Child" is a staggering achievement: the novel that Toni Cade Bambara worked on for twelve years until her death in 1995-a story that puts us at the center of the nightmare of the Atlanta child murders.

It was called "The City Too Busy To Hate", but two decades ago more than forty black children were murdered there with grim determination, their bodies found-in ditches, on riverbeds-strangled, beaten, and sexually assaulted. Bambara was living in Atlanta at th ...more

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Mar 09, 2013 Susan rated it it was amazing

I have been looking at this book on my shelf for some years. I love the work of Toni Cade Bambara, especially her previous novel, The Salt Eaters. Those Bones is not an easy read, but it is an extraordinary one. It is the story of one woman, one family, one city and indeed all of the USA. The story is about a spate of murders that occurred in Atlanta n the early 1980s. More than 40 black children were abducted, sexually abused, beaten and murdered. But the establishment deemed them runaways and ...more

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May 15, 2015 TIFFANY ANDERSON rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: finished

A necessary read but difficult to follow. This work parallels reality and lets us know the more things change, the more things stay the same. I've always wanted to know what follow through, if any, occurred with this case. From this novel, I know those families never stopped searching for answers and justice. ...more

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Dec 15, 2016 Bernard Norcott-mahany rated it really liked it

The book seemed a bit long, and the middle section seemed to drag a lot. The work was not edited when the author died, and one cannot think but that Bambara would have tightened up the work quite a bit. The opening section and the concluding sections, though, are quite compelling.

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Nov 17, 2020 Kimberley rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I wanted to like this book but it was painfully long and, somewhere around the halfway point, I began to resent its length and chastised myself for choosing to involve myself in something that brought so much angst: I hate quitting any book I pick up but there were points where this book nearly put me in a reading slump.

Every time I looked at it, I felt guilty because I knew I should be reading it but simply didn’t want to; it was too many pages and many of those pages had already proved to be ...more

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Dec 14, 2017 AFAMAST added it

"'Not an emergency,' Kofi. Your brother is not an emergency. You got that? And you too, iss. Just remember that. You two better remember that."

#blame #UnderServed #OverPoliced #Black #Power #Helplessness

This is a humbling moment, and one of the most powerful moments in the beginning of the novel. Zala comes to terms with the fact that her son might be in danger. She finally allows herself to feel scared instead of mad. On top of that, she finally allows her family to talk her into calling the po ...more

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Sep 28, 2020 Teresa marked it as abandoned · review of another edition

I love the idea of this book, and the writing is often remarkable. It's disheartening to know how many of the concerns raised here, about the way the system treats Black families, for example, haven't changed much since the events of the book or since the book was written. Seeing what the family at the center of the book went through as they tried to get help finding their son was truly wrenching and it provides an important perspective on so many child endangerment stories.

But I've read 250 pag ...more

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Feb 22, 2020 Sheila Smith rated it it was ok

Shelves: waste-of-time

I really wanted to like this book and I was more than willing to put in the time to get through the hefty amount of pages. It's difficult to describe why I couldn't get through this book. The writing is very "poetic", which made it a bit difficult to understand exactly what was going on at a few points in the book. I was very interested in the subject matter of the book, but it was very long-winded and difficult to read. Very dense writing. Maybe I'll revisit it at some point, but I just couldn' ...more

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Sep 16, 2020 Hilary Brown rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book should be interesting. Unfortunately, the weird pacing makes it incredibly difficult and tedious to read. Almost a slog. Bambara includes as many details about car trips and meals as she does about tragedies like the daycare explosion, which leads to a kind of boring presentation of events. Her pacing choices leave the reader without any clues as to which events are most important because she lends all events equal importance. Disappointing.

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Feb 19, 2021 Bug rated it it was ok

I appreciate the author's need to both witness and document the intensity of the time. Toni Cade Bambara treats a very serious moment in American history with the care and context it deserves. 5 stars on that front.

however. . .I have to admit that all in all, it's just a mishmash of stream of conscious musings with a half assed dollop of family drama to move the story along? Poorly edited and sadly poorly written! ...more

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Dec 02, 2019 Stephanie G. Lewis rated it liked it

Shelves: 2019-popsugar-reading-challenge

2019 Popsugar Reading Challenge: a book published posthumously.

The story is hard. I was a freshman in college in Pittsburgh, PA. 1980 Olympics when the United States did not participate. Black children were targeted. Police were apathetic. And there was a group seeking what today we are calling reparations.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"— ...more

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Oct 03, 2017 Allison rated it it was ok

Shelves: didn-t-finish

I have held on to this book for months planning to finish it. But I am giving up now. Tough content and too rambling to keep me focused. Wish the story were tighter and more easily read. I wanted to like/finish it.

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May 05, 2020 Emma rated it liked it

Shelves: pandemic-reads

This was a slow burn. Interesting and compelling but also really confusing. I'm still not sure if I understand what happened. ...more

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Jan 10, 2021 Robin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: racism, 2021, audio, fiction, historical-fiction, woman-authors, ethnic-people-of-color, favorite-authors, femminist, ebooks

Toni Morrison called this book the author's magnum opus. ...more

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Jul 07, 2015 Adam rated it liked it · review of another edition

I guess the rating would be closer to a 3 1/2, fwiw.

There's a lot that can go wrong with a book like this. Published posthumously, a book is in danger of either editing away the author's voice, or not editing enough; based on first hand research, a book is in danger of overloading on exposition in order to justify the research; based on a historical event from recent history, a book may have trouble condensing the wider drama onto an individual level, even operating at epic scale.

Those Bones are I guess the rating would be closer to a 3 1/2, fwiw.

There's a lot that can go wrong with a book like this. Published posthumously, a book is in danger of either editing away the author's voice, or not editing enough; based on first hand research, a book is in danger of overloading on exposition in order to justify the research; based on a historical event from recent history, a book may have trouble condensing the wider drama onto an individual level, even operating at epic scale.

Those Bones are Not My Child suffers from each of these flaws at points, and one wonders how a final draft edited by Bambara would have looked. As it stands, the book is flanked by a brilliant first and last 100 pages that are some of the best writing about family affairs that I've read. Here, the family dynamic is captured in a jittery balance between all the family members, and it's an accomplishment. The rest of the novel (still another 450+ pages) is brilliant when it uses this dynamic to capture the family and the community in other places. It's a nice, subtle reminder that our main character Zala, isn't alone in her quest to find her missing son and to understand the pattern of murders of young Black children in Atlanta in the early 80s.

A lot of the text is caught up in accounts of the more broad history of the case, and there are a lot of long scenes that seem to serve no purpose but to fill in the blanks. On one hand, these are important tools to help understand the enormity and complexity of this piece of history, especially as we understand that the main characters in this novel don't have any reason to trust the official narrative of the investigation. On the other, we're left with in a middle section that sometimes feels like a chore to get through, especially as the characterization does seem to take a back-seat in the densest of these passages. But there are standout moments throughout, especially when the book is operating in present time and and getting close to its very memorable characters, or taking a few steps back and hinting at some of the complexities in addition to race and class that both hinder and guide the investigation.

This is a valuable book, and I'm glad that I read it. But I did have some trouble getting through parts of the book. ...more

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Jun 23, 2008 Joolie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: smartie pantsez

Recommended to Joolie by: peta

Shelves: fiction, race-and-or-class

I have read two books by Toni Cade Bambara, and she was a brilliant writer. So brilliant, that i think she is too smart for me! I love her language but sometimes it was hard to follow for me - more so in The Salt Eaters. She was definitely not fond of the linear and her writings soak up layers and shifting times and characters. In other words, you may need to keep on yr toes. This book is a fictionalized story of true events that happened in and around Atlanta during the late 70's and early 80's ...more

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About Toni Cade Bambara

Toni Cade Bambara

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Toni Cade Bambara, born Miltona Mirkin Cade (March 25, 1939 – December 9, 1995) was an African-American author, documentary film-maker, social activist and college professor.

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. In 1970 she changed her name to include the name of a West Toni Cade Bambara, born Miltona Mirkin Cade (March 25, 1939 – December 9, 1995) was an African-American author, documentary film-maker, social activist and college professor.

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. In 1970 she changed her name to include the name of a West African ethnic group, Bambara.

Bambara graduated from Queens College with a B.A. in Theater Arts/English Literature in 1959, then studied mime at the Ecole de Mime Etienne Decroux in Paris, France. She also became interested in dance before completing her master's degree in American studies at City College, New York (from 1962), while serving as program director of Colony Settlement House in Brooklyn. She has also worked for New York social services and as a recreation director in the psychiatric ward of Metropolitan hospital. From 1965 to 1969 she was with City College's Search for Education, Elevation, Knowledge-program. She taught English, published material and worked with SEEK's black theatre group. She was made assistant professor of English at Rutgers University's new Livingston College in 1969, was visiting professor in Afro-American Studies at Emory University and at Atlanta University (1977), where she also taught at the School of Social Work (until 1979). She was writer-in-residence at Neighborhood Arts Center (1975–79), at Stephens College at Columbia, Missouri (1976) and at Atlanta's Spelman College (1978–79). From 1986 she taught film-script writing at Louis Massiah's Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia.

Bambara participated in several community and activist organizations, and her work was influenced by the Civil Rights and Black Nationalist movements of the 1960s. She went on propaganda trips to Cuba in 1973 and to Vietnam in 1975. She moved to Atlanta, GA, with her daughter, Karma Bene, and became a founding member of the Southern Collective of African-American Writers.

Toni Cade Bambara was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1993 and died of it in 1995, at the age of 56.

(from Wikipedia)

aka Toni Cade ...more