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Explanation and Analysis:
“Raymond’s Run” is a short story from Bambara’s 1972 story collection Gorilla, My Love. The story is realist, meaning that it tries to accurately represent reality. The story’s realism comes across in the style of the writing—rather than having the young Squeaky narrate the story using overly literary or formal language, Bambara makes the writing informal and conversational, so as to capture the way that a young Black girl living in Harlem in the 1970s would speak.
This story was notably written during the Black Arts Movement, a period in the 1960s and 1970s when Black writers and artists tried to capture the Black experience in new ways, influenced by the Black Nationalist and Civil Rights movements happening in the U.S. at the time. While some writers told stories that more directly communicated the importance of Black pride, other writers, like Bambara, told everyday stories of Black people with subtler political and social messages.
In “Raymond’s Run,” for example, Bambara communicates the ways that Black girls (especially ones with absent parents) learn to be tough and competitive in order to survive, and how they will, ultimately, find greater freedom in learning to treat other Black girls with care and respect, the way that Squeaky does with Gretchen by the end of the story. In this way, “Raymond’s Run” can also be considered a work of feminist literature, as it engages with questions related to gender and female solidarity.
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