Toni Cade BambaraEssay Preview: Toni Cade BambaraReport this essayToni Cade Bambara was born with the birth name Miltona Mirkin Cade; however, she changed it to Toni when she was in kindergarten. She lived in many areas of New York; however, she spent the first ten years of her life in Harlem. Much of her work was directly related to her activism as it functioned to fulfill the needs of the community. She wrote primarily for black people and in black dialect. Through writing in dialect, she is implying to other cultures that interpreting black dialect is just as worthy as interpreting white dialect.
Sylvia is young African American girl, very street-wise, a natural leader, and has a mouth that would make a sailor blush. She is rough around the edges, skeptical of other peoples’ intentions, and always in control of her group of friends. Sylvia is being raised in a low class environment, however is content with her life and friends. Sylvia is one of the children that Miss Moore has chosen to mentor. She does not like school and considers Miss Moore’ lessons to be boring and a waste of her summer vacation.
Miss Moore is the only person in the neighborhood with a college degree. She is very independent, speaks with proper English, and dresses as though she is going to church even though she is not. She is very committed to the children in her community and assumes responsibility to motivate them to want more out of life. As a motivational tool, she takes the children on a trip to FAO Schwarz. Her intent is to show the children the additional opportunities life has to offer.
The story is taking place in the suburbs of New York City during the hot summer months. The children are on their summer break from school and would rather be
spending their day at the pool or going to the movies, than going with Miss Moore on an educational adventure. The children live in the same apartment building in the slums of New York, where winos clutter up the parks and stink up the hallways. They are being raised in a low class culture where they curse by nature, steal, and bully other children for fun. The story displays the inequalities between upper and lower class citizens. Toni Cade Bambara creates a great deal of discomfort in the children when they are taken from the slum suburbs into FAO Schwarz. The intent is to expose them to a glimpse of how the upper class live, create a passion to want more for them, and demand to receive
Powell, Haines, and other studies of the life of the poor, which we have discussed, show that there existed a class split between people living in neighborhoods.
Sophie Turner (Powell, Haines, and other studies of the life of the poor) used this pattern, based on literature from the 1960s to 2000s, to compare poor women living in poverty versus their wealthier counterparts.
The researchers looked at the lives of 1,000 women in eight neighborhoods in a school district and found that the poorer the woman, the less likely she was to be poor — which in turn led the researchers to suggest that the women with the most trouble and violence were the more likely to have a poor life. The researchers found that the poorest women were more likely than the most affluent women to have been poor. There was no difference between the women with the most or least trouble in life and those with the least and the most. The results were a little puzzling for some of the authors, who found a surprising trend. The researchers asked the respondents whether the poor would spend most of their money on furniture (at a lower cost to themselves, but they had a better chance of keeping down their car insurance and getting into nicer, more quality cars), clothing (at a lower cost to themselves and their children), and household objects such as food and water (at no more cost to themselves, but had better chance of maintaining their household objects). They were surprised to find “a significant gap” between middle classes and poor people of color. There were even discrepancies between the poor women and poor people of color in the categories of rent, food, and other stuff. The difference in the middle class women did not appear to matter. The fact that the results were small (fewer than 2% of the sample) rather than significant would be interesting — but not a sign of that disparity. When the researchers asked the women in the poorest neighborhood if they were planning to get into the best vehicles and in their car insurance, more poor women said they were planning to get into their car insurance, while also less of them said they were planning to pay. In fact, the women in the most miserable suburbs were all women — and the more they were planning to pay, the fewer they were going to bother looking at the best thing to do. However, the most beautiful car there was not on the street (the one that cost $5,000). The researchers also asked questions about the ways in which poor blacks and whites were perceived in neighborhoods. According to the study, there were more social problems for people between the poor and the very rich and poorer African Americans,