lively West Coast world. He completed Tomorrow’s
Children,a provocative and controversial screen-
play about poverty and enforced sterilization that
actually included a scene of a vasectomy in
progress. He also completed High School Girl,an-
other work with intense sexual content that fo-
cused on pregnancy and abortion. Thurman left
Hollywood and returned to New York in May
1934, his health failing.
Thurman defied the reality of his physical de-
cline, insisting that he live life to the fullest for as
long as possible. An alcoholic known for his prefer-
ence for gin, Thurman eventually contracted tu-
berculosis. In July 1934 he collapsed at the party
that he threw to celebrate his return to New York.
He was admitted to City Hospital, the very institu-
tion that he had featured in The Interne.His es-
tranged wife, Louise Thompson, cared for him
despite the tension that marked their relationship,
but scholars suggest that his former friends essen-
tially abandoned Thurman. Although Thurman
wrote to Hughes from his sickbed, Hughes did not
reply with any regularity. After six months of hos-
pitalization, Thurman succumbed to the disease.
Funeral services were held in the St. James Presby-
terian Church on Christmas Eve. The popular
mystery writer and playwright Hughes Allison
composed the eulogy. “There was one word,” he
recalled, “which Wallace Thurman used to de-
scribe a situation or a book or a play or a joke or
anything which he thought superior and outstand-
ing—‘Priceless.’” Allison then insisted that Thur-
man’s “life, his work, his success characterize that
word—the word and his name are synonymous.
Wallace Thurman was Priceless” (Klotman, 273).
Thurman was laid to rest in Silver Mount Ceme-
tery on Staten Island.
Bibliography
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Henderson, Mae. “Portrait of Wallace Thurman.” In The
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Klotman, Phyllis. “Wallace Thurman.” In Dictionary of
Literary Biography. Vol. 51:Afro-American Writers
from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940, edited by
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260–273.
Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue.New
York: Knopf, 1981.
McIver, Dorothy. Stepchild in Harlem: The Literary Career
of Wallace Thurman.Ann Arbor, Mich.: University
Microfilms International, 1985.
“Obituary: Wallace Thurman.” New York Times,23 De-
cember 1934, 17.
Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes: I, Too,
Sing America.Vol. 1, 1902–1941.New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986.
Singh, Amritjit, and Daniel Scott, eds. The Collected
Writings of Wallace Thurman: A Harlem Renaissance
Reader.New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
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Thurman, Wallace. Infants of the Spring.1932, reprint,
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———. The Blacker the Berry.1929, reprint, New York:
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van Notten, Eleonore. Wallace Thurman’s Harlem Renais-
sance.Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994.
Wallace Thurman Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale Univer-
sity; Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard
University; William Jourdan Rapp Collection, Uni-
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Wright, Shirley Haynes. A Study of the Fiction of Wallace
Thurman.Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms
International, 1985.“Ticket Home”Octavia Wynbush(1939)
One of several short stories that OCTAVIAWYN-
BUSHpublished in THECRISISduring the 1930s.
“Ticket Home” explored the challenges of re-
claiming a difficult past and reconnecting with
family abandoned. The protagonist, Margaret, fi-
nally decides to return to her country home in
order to face the daughter whom she left some 14
years earlier. In the course of her journey, she
meets a young woman who is in fact her daughter.
The girl has no idea that she is in the company of
her mother. Margaret uses their time together to
assure the girl of her mother’s love, and the story
ends without any revelation of Margaret’s true
identity.
The escapism that is implicit in “Ticket Home”
is moderated somewhat by Wynbush’s exploration
of the great psychic and emotional pain of her self-
ish and desperate protagonists.“Ticket Home” 521