work, including the prize-winning essay “ON
BEING YOUNG—A WOMAN—AND COLORED”
(1925), the plays THEPOTMAKER(1927), THE
PURPLEFLOWER(1928), and EXIT,ANILLUSION
(1929) and “THE YOUNG BLOOD HUNGERS”
(1928), a perceptive essay on race and social vio-
lence. Bonner’s works appeared in BLACKOPALS,
the short-lived but notable African-American
Philadelphia literary magazine, and in two of the
leading race journals of the period, the NAACP’s
CRISISand the Urban League’s OPPORTUNITY.In
the years before her 1930 marriage, Bonner, who
published regularly, also employed the pseudonym
of JOSEPHMAREEANDREWon several occasions.
Bonner received recognition for her work
through the annual Crisisand Opportunityliterary
prize contests. In the first Opportunitycontest, held
in 1924, Bonner earned an honorable mention for
her story “The Hands” (1925). In 1932, judges FAN-
NIEHURST, STERLINGBROWN, and Richard Walsh
awarded her innovative short story montage, “A
Possible Triad on Black Notes” (1933), an honorable
mention in that year’s literary contest. One year
later, Bonner’s “Tin Can” won her first place over
works by GEORGESCHUYLERand Henry B. Jones.
Bonner fared equally well in the Crisiscompetitions.
Judges Edward Bok, JOELSPINGARN, and BENJAMIN
BRAWLEYawarded her first place in the essay divi-
sion for “On Being Young—a Woman—and Col-
ored.” In 1927 she won the prestigious first prize in
the literary art and expression division for a multi-
genre collection of works that included two plays, a
short story, and an essay. Other writers honored that
year were BRENDARAYMORYCK,EULALIESPENCE,
RANDOLPHEDMONDS, and JOHNMATHEUS.
In 1930 Bonner married William Almy Oc-
comy, a Rhode Island native and graduate of
BROWN UNIVERSITY. She soon moved with her
husband to Chicago, where she would live for just
over 40 years, and started a family that eventually
included three children: Warwick, William, and
Marita Joyce. Bonner returned once again to the
classroom and began teaching English at the
Philips High School in 1950. She stepped down
from that post in 1963. It was her daughter and
namesake Marita who would later gather together
Bonner’s unpublished stories and republish them
in the late 1980s. Although far removed from the
supportive East Coast circles in which she used to
move, Bonner continued to write. She used
CHICAGOas the new backdrop for her stories of
African-American life and located several tales in
the fictional, multiethnic community of Frye
Street. Critic Joyce Flynn characterizes this fic-
tional Depression-era community that Bonner cre-
ated, and in which she fully invested in her
writings, as “a daring symbol of the diversity, nov-
elty, and opportunity available in cities like
Chicago and Detroit” (Flynn, xi).
As a playwright, Bonner engaged her audi-
ences directly, often using the second person to
draw in her readers and make them witnesses to
the events about to unfold. The stage directions
for The Pot Maker,for instance, begin with a gentle
imperative: “See first the room. A low ceiling;
smoked walls; far more length than breadth.” She
then suggests that her readers have an intense fa-
miliarity with the place and characters of the
piece: “You know there is a garden,” she writes,
“because if you listen carefully you can hear a tap-
ping of bushes against the window and a gentle
rustling of leaves.” Bonner sustains the hypnotic
quality of her prose and stage directions in her
other two plays. In The Purple Flower,she evaluates
her readers’ reactions to the “Sundry White Dev-
ils” in the Dante-esque world of the play. “You are
amazed at their adroitness,” she declares. “Their
steps are intricate. You almost lose your head fol-
lowing them.” In Exit,Bonner’s assertions about
her readers are extremely forceful; by making her
audience part of the set design, they become a vital
part of the script and heavily invested in the out-
come of the play.
Bonner’s penchant for realist fiction and her
substantial canon of works based in Chicago’s eth-
nic and minority neighborhoods are believed to
have reinforced RICHARDWRIGHT’Sliterary per-
spectives. Scholars believe that works such as “Tin
Can” anticipate themes that Wright began to ex-
plore in his literary career that blossomed in the
years after the Renaissance. Bonner created deft
and absorbing portraits of African-American
women and the demanding and often unsatisfying
worlds in which they lived. One of the talented
black feminist writers of the Harlem Renaissance,
Bonner’s works complemented the social visions
that writers like NELLA LARSEN,JESSIEFAUSET,
and Georgia Douglas Johnson developed in theirBonner, Marita Odette 53