How Do You Dress for the Revolution?

Minnie Ransom is cute, okay? She was a rootworker, a spiritual healer, a crisp woman whose practice transcended worldly concerns. But when we met him at the opening of the Toni Cade Bambara nuclear disaster prequel, salt eaters, in the midst of healing a physically disfigured civil rights worker, she wore a puffy red dress pulled at the waist with kente cloth and a fringed silk scarf that she handled like a robe. Sensual stretches of cloth envelop him, which make him look like “a farmer in Halston, a tobacco collector in Givenchy.” Nobody advises us not supposed to wish a woman like her wore this kind of clothing but Bambara winked as we broke off when a bus driver passed by with an interesting spot. Looks lively, he thought.

Throughout her oeuvre—novels, short stories, criticism, and other writings—Bambara has consistently used clothing as a vehicle for many things. It saves a bit of description, obviously, which naturally expands into characterization. But he also uses it as a conveyance of ideals and even a warning. Every letter of his work points us toward a grand dismantling of our every oppression, and with his imaginary pile of rags, he tells us that what lies beneath the oppression is something that is not only possible, but also beautiful.

Often, a writer announce character clothing. A bit of action ensues, then so-and-so enters the frame. We stop. Then, the author gives us a “So and so is wearing such and such.” There may be a bit of razzle-dazzle as the clothing offers a backdrop or some poetic description of colors and fabrics. We are led to understand that clothing is a useful ornament. These are often interruptions in the text, hasty expositional exercises. But Bambara, who is a gifted film critic, educator, and show creator, wears clothes as the eye sees them, whether they belong to the characters or the readers.

There’s a cinematic quality to what he does. The closest, in a nutshell “Mrs. Bai and Take the Stone Mountain,” were collected posthumously Distant Sighting & Rescue Mission, our hero emerges from a kung fu movie and soon takes on a one-two-three-four pack of white supremacist hooligans in hooded sweatsuits (hmph) and swastika belts. Just earlier, Mustafa swung his “elegantly draped coat” around his fellow travelers “like a cloak” to offer respite from the cold. After a bing-bang-boom, the thugs are catapulted, and we trace Tram’s tense figure: “Calves tense against the front of his jutting denim thighs, the wind tucks his sweater against his chest so that eight separate abdominal muscle segments lift up. such a relief.” And cut!

On the ferry in the titular story of seabird Still Life, everyone looked at each other’s feet. One grandmother judged the “soft cloth shoes” and matching suit of polite passengers. A country woman spit at the “two new black shoes” belonging to a soldier who was part of the army occupying her village, and who would not meet her eyes. The ship’s captain looked down “to tuck newspapers into his shoes to dampen the vibrations” of his ship’s tattered engines. He in turn glances at the landlords living in the town who make their annual pilgrimage to collect rent and voices “in traditional dress, ill-fitting leather shoes mocking tactics”. There’s a revolution, and every single glance is a surreptitious scan of information. Everyone is tired, or scared. Everyone’s feet hurt. Anglo foreigners buzz about the “dazzling shoes”, but even they just want to kick their feet.

In sequence from the epic novel Bambara Bones Aren’t My Son, one that rivals the D-Day scene in Save Private Ryan due to the shock and frenzied terror, a daycare center exploded. The mayhem is as disgusting as it sounds, especially in the context of the fictional story of the infamous murder of Atlanta’s children. Bambara’s camera jumps erratically, encounters things and picks up sounds that are too unbearable to even think about. We find a mob of strangers in household ornaments, bath caps warning that the explosion “sounded like someone ripping a rag”, except “no rag in the world is torn like that”. A man in a checkered coat disappeared in shock from what he had witnessed. But others jump into action: A tattered vest carries one child to safety; a bathrobe offered uplifting support for a woman who understandably lost it; a woman in a floral apron insists on documenting the pre-explosion environment for an outstretched microphone. (The appearance of a sturdy looking bystander in a “long gunmetal gray trench coat with silver galosh flaps and new Wellington boots, silver trim around the top,” whose presence makes one bystander snarl “I didn’t know they had Pierre Cardin designs for the bureau,” is so horrific to both the reader and the character he cares about that they spend the rest of the novel watching him.) Even in such a fragile and exposed state, Bambara urges us to realize, these people find a way to see through to each other’s needs. respectively.

Sitting across from Minnie Ransom in the opening scene of Salt Eater is Velma Henry. She’s no stranger to dressing well either: At a dinner where she tried to drag her husband across the restaurant booth and back into his life, we looked down with him at her “velour, brown, knit blouse,” her shirt type. it would put him “under her spell” before their troubles. But he slipped away, as did a lot of other things — during a convalescent session, he sat naked under the sheer barrier of a hospital gown. What’s more, beautiful clothing is the thing that triggers the breakdown that needs to be taken care of in the first place.

After spending her days getting muddy and bloodied in standard SNCC overalls (see: Tanisha C. Ford’s chapter on them in her book Freed Thread) during a protest march, he drags himself to a nearby hotel phone only to run into the speaker from the culminating rally. He had arrived in a limousine, hopping out in his Sunday best: “Then shiny black boots stepped out onto the dry grass, knife-tipped trousers straightened, jacket hung straight, dazzling white shirt, cerulean tie. While she was about to collapse from exhaustion, she and a group of female friends jumped into a room with silver ice buckets and red silk pajamas. “Field of red silk,” wrote Bambara. “No bib overalls. No dirty jars here.” The gaping gulf between her purported dedication to the cause (which may require some actual solidarity with Velma and her labors toward collective liberation) and her personal extravagance is what breaks her.

Bambara spreads the brand name sparingly and often remotely: In Those bones besides that Cardin slit, a limousine driver overheard three fashion shoppers chatting about Bill Blass designs from the cab of his limousine while he was driving; in the namesake essay of Distant Sighting, Bambara saw Armani’s female collar from his seat on the bus passing through the lobby of a high-rise. But what to make of it Salt eaters Halston and Givenchy’s prayer is so thrilling that it’s used as shorthand for the little touches of considered collage rather than hierarchical markers. Like Halston, like Given. We don’t have to go out into the world naked. Being stuck with ourselves can be painful: Inside Those bones as Zala begins the long process of recovering from the trauma of the loss of her son, she realizes that she must “learn how to hem the dragging flesh of her life with delicate, tiny stitches.” But the pursuit of status and material comforts when we try to cover ourselves up can be a corrosive and dangerous endeavor, Bambara tells us. Stick to the care that makes all things right, he taught us, and your soul will thank you.