When Thunderbuns, big and bad charges aisle of movie theater Toni Cade Bambara's story My kids finally shut up and watch simple ass (Gorilla 15). She is matron, one establishment lets out in case of emergency, when potato chip bags exploding and kids are turning place out. Thunderbuns is figure of co-opted black power. As such, she stands as dead opposite of Bambara's feisty, militant, no-nonsense young female narrator/protagonist of story, who is variously named, depending on occasion, Scout, Badbird, Miss Muffin, (her real name), Precious, and Peaches. Thunderbuns, as her friends call her, appears inset story Hazel tells My to illustrate how adults betray children. Thunderbuns is not actually agent of betrayal here, but rather enforcer of racially charged capitalist treachery. Hazel and her brothers, Big Brood and Baby Jason, have paid their money to see a film called Gorilla, My Love, only to be shown a raggedy old brown print of a Jesus movie: And am ready to kill, not cause got anything gainst Jesus. Just that when you fixed to watch a gorilla picture you don't wanna get messed around with Sunday School stuff (15). Hazel is momentarily silenced by weight of Thunderbuns's derived power. But not for long. With warrior-like power--her brothers refusing call--she storms manager's office and demands her money back. She sees his pasty-complexioned condescension. And, comic digression, she informs us, her reader/intimates, that he is wrong about her power and authority. She has full measure of her family's racially informed, communally enforced, defiant self-possession behind her. Even as her mother will terrorize teachers at P.S. 186 who dare to start playin dozens behind colored folks (17), Hazel will deliver on her threats. When money is not refunded, she starts a fire underneath candy counter that closes theater down for a week: mean even gangsters movies say My word is my bond. So don't nobody get away with nothin far as I'm concerned (18). The story My first appeared Redbook Magazine November, 1971, a year after publication of Bambara's pathbreaking, intimate, and incendiary black feminist anthology The Black Woman. The story itself has a genealogy, however, dating back to 1959, when Bambara's first child-narrated short story, Sweet Home, appeared Vendome magazine. When Bambara was interviewed by Beverly Guy-Sheftall mid-seventies, (1) she remarked on prospects for her protean and empowered girl narrators, whose stories had been appearing throughout sixties and were finally gathered up on wings of success of The Black Woman and published a collection entitled Gorilla, My Love 1972: There are certain kinds of spirits that I'm very appreciative of, people who are tough, but very compassionate. You put me any neighborhood, any city, and will tend to gravitate toward that type. The Gorilla (the story as well as that collection) is a kind of person who will survive, and she's triumphant her survival. (233) All but four of fifteen stories Gorilla, My Love are framed by consciousness of a child or adolescent protagonist; of those, ten are voiced first person (2)--with singular I drawing its energy and power from an implied we of community. When Hazel storms manager's office, then, she is riding on strength of more than a decade of such acts of defiant resistance by Bambara's feisty girls. Bambara calls her the kid--of story and whole collection. But fact there is no singular narrative kid any prosaic sense unifying whole collection. Some of I voices are adolescents; others quite young children, including Hazel herself from title-story--who is proud to be navigator of her grandfather's car on way back from a pecan-gathering expedition. …