After Bonner married accountant William
Almy Occomy, a Rhode Island native and Brown
University graduate, she moved to Chicago in
- Shortly after the marriage, Bonner ceased
writing drama to raise her family of three chil-
dren—William Almy, Jr., Warwick Gale Noel, and
Marita Joyce—and to focus exclusively on writing
fiction. For her work she received literary recogni-
tion in CRISIS and OPPORTUNITY. While her Chicago
stories from 1933 on reflect new subject matter,
those written between 1937 and 1941, “On the
Altar,” “High Stepper,” “One True Love,” “Stones
for Bread,” “Reap It as You Sow It,” and “Light in
Dark Places,” continue to center on prejudice and
oppression, as did her earlier plays and essays.
In 1941, Bonner stopped writing and began
teaching in Chicago’s public school system, includ-
ing Phillips High School and the Doolittle School
for educationally challenged children. Aside from
family commitments and teaching, as some crit-
ics note, Bonner abandoned her writing to devote
much of her time and energy to the Christian Sci-
ence Church. On December 6, 1971, Bonner died
in Chicago as a result of injuries she sustained in a
fire in her apartment.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown-Guillory, Elizabeth. Their Place on the Stage:
Black Women Playwrights in America. Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood, 1988.
Burton, Jennifer, ed. Zora Neal Hurston, Eulalie
Spence, Marita Bonner, and Other Plays: The Prize
Plays and Other One-Acts Published in Periodicals.
New York: G. K. Hall, 1996.
Flynn, Joyce, and Joyce Occomy Stricklin, eds. Frye
Street and Environs: The Collected Works of Marita
Bonner. Boston: Beacon Press, 1987.
McKay, Nellie. “ ‘What Were They Saying?’: Black
Women Playwrights of the Harlem Renaissance.”
In The Harlem Renaissance Re-examined, edited
by Victor A. Kramer, 129–147. New York: AMS,
1986.
Roses, Lorraine E., and Ruth E. Randolph. “Marita
Bonner: In Search of Other Mothers’ Gardens.”
Black American Literature Forum 21, no. 1–2
(Spring–Summer 1987): 165–183.
Loretta G. Woodard
Bontemps, Arna Wendell (1902–1972)
Arna Wendell Bontemps was born in Alexandria,
Louisiana, on October 13, 1902, to Paul Bontemps,
a bricklayer and musician, and Maria Pembroke
Bontemps, a schoolteacher. The older of two chil-
dren (his sister was named Ruby), he was named
Arnaud, but his name was later shortened to Arna,
probably because it was easier to pronounce. His
French surname came from his father, who was
born in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. Bontemps
grew up in Los Angeles, California, where the fam-
ily migrated when he was a small child. His mother
died nine years after their arrival.
During his early teenage years, Bontemps, who
had been the only African American in his kinder-
garten class, was sent to a white boarding school to
counteract the worldly influence his father believed
Bontemps’s great uncle, Buddy Jo Ward, was hav-
ing on his only son. In 1923, Bontemps graduated
from Pacific Union College, a parochial college op-
erated by the Seventh-Day Adventist church, with
which the family was affiliated.
Bontemps was an influential and significant
member of the HARLEM RENAISSANCE literati and
had a close relationship with his best friend and
collaborator, LANGSTON HUGHES. Many of the
themes of his work, his “integrative approach” to
African-American writing, his attitude toward folk
material and Africa, and his racial protest, reflect
the primary concerns of Harlem Renaissance lit-
erature. Generally, the thematic, structural and
writing style of his poetry, fiction, and nonfiction
demonstrate the depth of Bontemps’s feeling for
and commitment to celebrating the cultural sig-
nificance of African-American contributions to
American culture. Although Bontemps was physi-
cally removed from the South, he maintained a
longing and appreciation for his southern ethnic
heritage. This admiration formed the basis for his
collected work.
Bontemps published his works in the liter-
ary magazines CRISIS and OPPORTUNITY, winning
awards and honors. In 1931, Bontemps, by then
the father of two, published God Sends Sunday.
However, by then, feeling the pinch of the Great
Depression, Bontemps had left Harlem to find
employment, going to Oakwood Junior College,Bontemps, Arna Wendell 65