Raymond's Run

Toni Cade Bambara was known throughout her career for her musings on Black life in America. Like many of her contemporaries in the community of Black women writers in the 1970s and 1980s, Bambara’s stories largely centered on Black people, young and old, living in Black neighborhoods in real American towns and cities. In his review of her first short story collection, Gorilla, My Love, in 1972, New York Times Book Reviewer C. D. B. Bryan stated that Bambara “…writes about love: love for one’s family, one’s friends, one’s race, one’s neighborhood, and it is the sort of love that comes with maturity and inner peace” (Goodnough, Abby. “Toni Cade Bambara, a Writer and Documentary Maker, 56.” The New York Times. 11 Dec. 1995). In addition to these themes, Bambara also writes thoughtfully about love for oneself in “Raymond’s Run.”

“Raymond’s Run” is often told in a humorous and somewhat stream-of-consciousness narration by the protagonist Hazel Elizabeth Deborah Parker (Squeaky). A young Black girl living in Harlem, Squeaky comes from a family of mostly boys and frequently thwarts traditional gender roles and provides logical assessments of traditionally feminine activities. For example, Squeaky disparages buying a May Pole dress as wasteful since the dress will only get dirty, and she’ll have grown out of it the following year.