Saggi/Essays 227 Issue 16 – Fall/Winter 2020 Iperstoria Cristina Di Maio New Kids on The Block Children as Political Subjects in Gorilla, My Love Abstract This article examines the depiction of children and adolescents in Toni Cade Bambara’s Gorilla, My Love, exploring the ways in which their performance characterizes them as potential agents of change within and outside the narrative. I argue that Bambara challenges the traditional portrayal of children as victimized and unaware of the social dynamics at play in the space they inhabit, rather identifying them as proto-political subjects who convey her own militant views. My analysis will be carried out taking into account specific aspects of the children’s performance, such as the use of vernacular, the figure of the ‘tomboy’ and creativity as a revolutionary practice. These elements will also be considered in light of Bambara’s involvement in the black liberation and women’s movements: the children protagonists in the stories will be investigated as heirs of Bambara’s radical message. Keywords: African American literature, children, Butler, Signifying, tomboy As a cultural worker who belongs to an oppressed people my job is to make revolution irresistible. (Toni Cade Bambara, Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara) n Gorilla, My Love (1972), her acclaimed first short story collection, Toni Cade Bambara captures, in her own words, “on-the-block, in-the-neighborhood, back glance pieces” (Tate 1983, 24): the stories in this collection thematize the complex social dynamics and the strife for empowerment of the African American communities (Harlem, the Bronx, Brooklyn, as well as rural Southern areas) depicted in them. A strong sense of belonging to a homey – yet often dilapidated – area, the need to protect it, and the urge to evolve within it are threads that run through the collection, along with the identification of the community as a site in which race, gender, and class intersect in complex ways. The intricacies of the experiences overlapping in the neighborhood are frequently conveyed by children, the main characters and narrative voices in ten out of the fifteen stories that comprise this collection (Muther 2002, 448): in Gorilla, My I