works. Bonner paid particular attention to the pol-
itics of race and caste, the effects of poverty upon
the African-American family, and the nature of
marriage and domestic life.
This prolific and talented writer appears to
have stopped writing shortly after the Harlem
Renaissance ended. Her last published story ap-
peared in 1942, the same year in which she
joined the Christian Science church. Bonner died
tragically when her Chicago apartment was razed
by fire.
Bibliography
The Marita Bonner Papers are held in the Schlesinger Li-
brary, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Allen, Carol. Black Women Intellectuals: Strategies of Na-
tion, Family, and Neighborhood in the Works of Pauline
Hopkins, Jessie Fauset, and Marita Bonner.New York:
Garland Publishers, 1998.
Flynn, Joyce, and Joyce Occomy Striklin. Frye Street and
Environs: The Collected Works of Marita Bonner.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1987.
Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Elizabeth Randolph. “Marita
Bonner: In Search of Other Mothers’ Gardens,”
Black American Literature Forum 21, nos. 1–2
(spring-summer 1987): 165–183.
Bontemps, Arnaud (Arna) Wendell
(1902–1973)
A prolific and engaged writer, editor, teacher, librar-
ian, and literary critic of the Harlem Renaissance.
His enduring and close professional friendship with
LANGSTONHUGHESsheds light on the opportuni-
ties and challenges of a writerly professional life
during the period. Bontemps was highly regarded
for his writings of poetry and historical fiction and
became especially influential as a writer of chil-
dren’s books. His numerous collections of fiction
and poems for children complemented the land-
mark efforts of others such as JESSIEFAUSETand
W. E. B. DUBOIS, who published works that would
educate children of color about African history and
African-American culture.
Bontemps was the only son born to Paul Bis-
mark Bontemps, a successful bricklayer, and Maria
Carolina Pembroke Bontemps, a schoolteacher, in
Alexandria, Louisiana. In the face of threatening
racism and aggressive KUKLUXKLANactivity, the
Bontemps family, which also included daughter
Ruby Sarah, migrated to California when he was
three years old. Bontemps, who would return to
the South much later in life, eventually migrated
from his family’s home in California to HARLEM.
Bontemps lost his mother when he was 12 years
old. He forged close ties to his maternal grand-
mother and members of his large, extended family
who also had relocated to California from
Louisiana. Paul Bontemps, a former Catholic who
converted to the Seventh-Day Adventist faith and
worked as a lay minister of the church, was deter-
mined to maintain the family in the face of their
loss, however. He continued to shape his children’s
intellectual and spiritual development. Following
the death of Maria Bontemps, Arna became ex-
tremely close to his Uncle Buddy, a dynamic figure
whose love of stories and passion for storytelling
inspired his young nephew. The exciting tales that
Bontemps heard from his Uncle Buddy eventually
informed his own writing and reflected his strong
ties, through family, to the South.
Paul Bontemps’s deep religious sensibilities
shaped his son’s early education. When he was 15,
Bontemps enrolled at the predominantly white
San Fernando Academy, a boarding school affili-
ated with the Seventh-Day Adventists. He then
attended Pacific Union College, where he earned
his B.A. in 1923. Bontemps, an avid reader with a
passion for learning, endeavored to continue his
studies after his graduation. While working night
shifts in the Los Angeles postal system, he took a
number of courses at the University of California,
Los Angeles.
Both Bontemps and the enterprising future
writer and editor WALLACETHURMANwere em-
ployed at the same Los Angeles post office. The
two, who actually did not meet while working
there, eventually became friends because they
moved in the same Los Angeles social circle. They
shared their enthusiasm for writing and often dis-
cussed their own work and ambitions. It was dur-
ing this early postgraduate period that Bontemps
began submitting his poems for publication. His
first acceptance letter, for a poem entitled “Hope,”
came from Jessie Fauset, literary editor of TheCRI-
SIS. The poem appeared in the August 1924 issue
alongside works by Langston Hughes, OTTIEGRA-
HAMand Fauset. Shortly after his debut publica-54 Bontemps, Arnaud (Arna) Wendell