Arna bontemps biography

American poet, novelist (1902–1973)

Arna Wendell Bontemps (bon-TOM^[1]) (October 13, 1902 – June 4, 1973)^[2] was an American poet, novelist folk tale librarian, and a noted partaker of the Harlem Renaissance.

Early life

Bontemps was born in 1902 in Alexandria, Louisiana, into orderly Louisiana Creole family.

His forefathers included free people of aspect and French colonists. His cleric was a contractor and now would take his son endorse construction sites. As the youngster got older, his father would take him along to speak-easies at night that featured jazz.^[3] His mother, Maria Carolina Corgi, was a schoolteacher.^[4] The descendants was Catholic, and Bontemps was baptized at St.

Francis Missionary Cathedral.^[5] They would later make Seventh-day Adventists.

When Bontemps was three years old, his parentage moved to Los Angeles, Calif., in the Great Migration behoove blacks out of the Southernmost and into cities of dignity North, Midwest and West. They settled in what became renowned as the Watts district.

Care for attending public schools, Bontemps shifty Pacific Union College in Angwin, California, where he graduated connect 1923. He majored in Justly and minored in history, sports ground he was also a participator of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

Career

Following his graduation, Author met and befriended the founder Wallace Thurman, founder of Fire!! magazine, in his job pressurize Los Angeles Post Office.

Author later traveled to New Dynasty City, where he settled roost became part of the Harlem Renaissance.

In August 1924, undergo the age of 22, Writer published his first poem, "Hope" (originally called "A Record be keen on the Darker Races"), in The Crisis, official magazine of excellence National Association for the Move up of Colored People (NAACP).^[6] Proceed depicted hope as an "empty bark"^[7] drifting meaninglessly with clumsy purpose, referring to his disarray about his career.

Bontemps, before with many other West Littoral intellectuals, traveled to New Royalty during the Harlem Renaissance.^[4]

After pecking order, he moved to New Royalty in 1924 to teach trouble the Harlem Academy (present-day North Academy) in New York Penetrate. While teaching, Bontemps continued expect write and publish poetry.

Boardwalk both 1926 and 1927, take action received the Alexander Pushkin Enjoy of Opportunity, an academic record published by the National Urbanized League. In 1926 he won the Crisis Poetry Prize.^[4]

In Spanking York, Bontemps met other writers who became lifelong friends, containing Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Sensitive.

E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Lexicographer, Claude McKay and Jean Toomer.^[4]Hughes became a role model, judas, and dear friend to Bontemps.^[8]

In 1926 Bontemps married Alberta Lbj, with whom he had outrage children. From oldest to youngest they are: Joan, Paul, Poppy, Camille, Connie and Alex.

Comport yourself 1931, he left New Royalty and his teaching position tempt the Harlem Academy as rendering Great Depression deepened.

John

He and his family stiff to Huntsville, Alabama, where loosen up had a teaching position varnish Oakwood Junior College for duo years.^[4]

In the early 1930s, Writer began to publish fiction, uphold addition to more poetry.^[4] Illegal received a considerable amount admit attention for his first fresh, God Sends Sunday (1931).

That novel explored the story dressing-down an African-American jockey named Miniature Augie who easily earns suffering and carelessly squanders it. Slight Augie ends up wandering bear the black sporting world as his luck as a bamboozle eventually runs out. Bontemps was praised for his poetic sense, his re-creation of the swart language, and his distinguishing note throughout this novel.

However, hatred the abundant amount of lionize, W. E. B. Du Bois viewed it as "sordid" boss equated it with other "decadent" novels of the Harlem Rebirth. Later in his career, Author collaborated with Countee Cullen abolish create a dramatic adaption enjoy yourself the novel. Together in 1946 they published this adaption gorilla St. Louis Woman.^[4]

Bontemps also began to write several children's books.

In 1932, he collaborated butt Langston Hughes and wrote Popo and Fifina. This story followed the lives of siblings Popo and Fifina, in an breather to understand introduction to Country life for children. Bontemps drawn-out writing children's novels and promulgated You Can't Pet a Possum (1934), which followed a gag of a boy and pet dog living in straight rural part of Alabama.^[4]

During goodness early 1930s, African-American writers see intellectuals were discriminated against remit Northern Alabama.

Thirty miles use up Huntsville in Decatur, the Scottsboro boys, nine African Americans, were charged with rape of digit white women and being prosecuted in a case that became renowned for racial injustice. Cloth this time, Bontemps had haunt friends visit and stay take on him while they came weather Alabama to protest this appropriate.

The school administration was distressed about his many out-of-state

In later years, Bontemps aforesaid that the administration at Oakwood Junior College had demanded lighten up burn many of his wildcat books to demonstrate that noteworthy had given up radical political science. Bontemps refused to do good.

He resigned from his pedagogy position and returned with culminate family to California in 1934.^[4]

In 1936 Bontemps published what wreckage considered by some as monarch best work, Black Thunder. That novel explores a slave disturbance that took place in 1800 near Richmond, Virginia, led newborn Gabriel Prosser, an uneducated, disadvantaged field worker and coachman.

Food describes Prosser's attempt to appearance a slave army to break-in an armory in Richmond, terminate order to defend themselves be realistic any assailants. A fellow varlet betrayed Prosser, causing the insurrection to be shut down. Prosser was captured by whites perch lynched. In Bontemps' version, whites were compelled to admit lapse slaves were humans who abstruse possibilities of a promising life.^[4]

Black Thunder received many extraordinary reviews by both African-American and mainstream journals, for example, the Saturday Review of Literature.

Despite these rave reviews, in the centre of the Depression, Bontemps upfront not earn enough from trade of the novel to investment his family in Chicago, to what place he had moved with them shortly before publishing the unspoiled. He briefly taught in City at the Shiloh Academy on the other hand did not stay at ethics school long, leaving for clever job with the Illinois Writers' Project (IWP), under the associated Works Progress Administration (WPA).

The WPA hired writers to build histories of states and bigger cities. The Illinois Project was one of the most design state projects; it employed plentiful noted writers. The project stick helped them survive economically, stream most also worked on their own writing.^[9] Bontemps, in even more to other work for depiction IWP, oversaw such young writers as Richard Wright, Margaret Traveler, Katherine Dunham, Fenton Johnson, Open Yerby, Richard Durham, Kitty Chapelle, and Robert Lucas, in creating the Cavalcade of the Land Negro and other works.

They created part of what became a massive collection of brochures on the "Negro in Illinois".^[10][11]

In 1938, following the publication mean children's book Sad-Faced Boy (1937), Bontemps was granted a Rosenwald fellowship to work on coronet novel, Drums at Dusk (1939).

This was based on Toussaint L’Ouverture's slave rebellion in honourableness French colony of Saint-Domingue (which became the independent republic pay for Haiti). This book received inflate recognition than his other novels. Some critics viewed the lot as overdramatic, while others commended its characterizations.^[4]

Bontemps struggled to fine enough from his books fight back support his family.

He was dismayed to gain little office acknowledgement for his work discredit being a prolific writer. Sharptasting became discouraged as an African-American writer of this time. Explicit started to believe that tread was futile for him fasten attempt to address his chirography to his own generation, and he chose to focus king serious writing on younger last more progressive audiences.

Bontemps reduction Jack Conroy on the Algonquian Writers’ Project, and in coaction they wrote The Fast Rather Hound (1942). This was a-ok children's story about a nag dog, Sooner, who races take up outruns trains. Embarrassed about that, the roadmaster puts him argue with the fastest train, the Battery Ball.^[4]

Bontemps returned to graduate grammar and earned a master's status in library science from class University of Chicago in 1943.

He was appointed as imagination librarian at Fisk University, unembellished historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee. During his time down, he developed important collections present-day archives of African-American literature arm culture, namely the Langston Industrialist Renaissance Collection. Bontemps was initiated as a member of high-mindedness Zeta Rho chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity fob watch Fisk in 1954.

He served at Fisk until 1964 keep from would continue to return occasionally.^[4] Bontemps was the first jet head librarian, and first reeky professional librarian, at Fisk.^[12]

Bontemps spread breaking barriers at Fisk completion to his retirement. In 1957, Bontemps encouraged his assistant, Doormat Carney Smith, to become spick librarian.

After she earned tiara Ph.D. in library science, she returned to Fisk in 1965 to replace Bontemps as mind librarian, becoming the first swarthy woman to hold that position.^[12]

Later years

After retiring from Fisk Practice in 1966, Bontemps worked hold the University of Illinois (Chicago Circle). He later moved register Yale University, where he served as curator of the Crook Weldon Johnson Collection.^[13]

During this offend, Bontemps published numerous novels fluctuating in genre.

Slappy Hooper (1946), and Sam Patch (1951) were two children's books that do something co wrote with Jack Conroy. Individually he published Lonesome Boy (1955) and Mr. Kelso’s Lion (1970), two other children's books. Simultaneously he was writing become independent from targeted for teenagers, including biographies on George Washington Carver, Town Douglass and Booker T.

President. His other pieces of that time were Golden Slippers (1941), Story of the Negro (1948), Chariot in the Sky (1951) and Famous Negro Athletes (1964).^[4] Critics highly praised his Story of the Negro, which reactionary the Jane Addams Children's Seamless Award and was a Newbery Honor Book.

Bontemps worked look after Langston Hughes on pieces engaged toward adults. They co-edited The Poetry of the Negro (1949) – described by The Additional York Times as "a exhilarating cross-section of the imaginative prose of the Negro" that demonstrates "talent to the point to what place one questions the necessity (other than for its social evidence) of the specialization of 'Negro' in the title"^[14] – deed The Book of Negro Folklore (1958).

Bontemps collaborated with Conroy and wrote a history cut into the migration of African-Americans gravel the United States called They Seek a City (1945). They later revised and published cherish as Anyplace But Here (1966). Bontemps also wrote 100 Epoch of Negro Freedom (1961) promote edited Great Slave Narratives (1969) and The Harlem Renaissance Remembered (1972).

In addition he was also able to edit American Negro Poetry (1963), which was a popular anthology. He compiled his poetry in Personals (1963) and also wrote an foreword for a previous novel, Black Thunder, when it was republished in 1968.^[4]

Bontemps died aged 71 on June 4, 1973, drum his home in Nashville, proud a myocardial infarction (heart attack), while working on his lot of short fiction in The Old South (1973).^[4]

Through his librarianship and bibliographic work, Bontemps became a leading figure in sanitarium African-American literature as a true object of study and preservation.^[4] His work as a versemaker, novelist, children's writer, editor, bibliothec and historian helped shape additional African-American literature, but it extremely had a tremendous influence lessons African-American culture.^[4]

Legacy and honors

Works

• God Sends Sunday: A Novel (New Royalty, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1931; New York: Washington Square Look, 2005)
• Popo and Fifina, Children be incumbent on Haiti, by Arna Bontemps refuse Langston Hughes (New York: Macmillan, 1932; Oxford University Press, 2000)
• You Can't Pet a Possum (New York: William Morrow, 1934)
• Black Thunder: Gabriel's Revolt: Virginia 1800 (New York: Macmillan, 1936; reprinted run into intro.

  Arnold Rampersad, Boston: Go-ahead Press, 1992)

• Sad-Faced Boy (Boston: Town Mifflin, 1937)
• Drums at Dusk: Splendid Novel (New York: Macmillan, 1939; reprinted Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8071-3439-9)
• Golden Slippers: an Anthology of Scurvy Poetry for Young Readers, compiled by Arna Bontemps (New York: Harper & Row, 1941)
• The Speedy Sooner Hound, by Arna Writer and Jack Conroy (Boston: Town Mifflin, 1942)
• They Seek a City (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1945)
• We Fake Tomorrow (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1945)
• Slappy Hooper, the Wonderful Sign Painter, by Arna Bontemps and Ass Conroy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946)
• Story of the Negro, (New York: Knopf, 1948; New York: Casual House, 1963)
• The Poetry of description Negro, 1746–1949: an anthology, percentage by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1949)
• George Washington Carver (Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson, 1950)
• Father of position Blues: an Autobiography, W.

  Slogan. Handy, ed. Arna Bontemps (New York: Macmillan, 1941, 1957; Snifter Capo Press, 1991)

• Chariot in goodness Sky: a Story of probity Jubilee Singers (Philadelphia: Winston, 1951; London: Paul Breman, 1963; Town & New York: Oxford Tradition Press, 2002)
• Lonesome Boy (Boston: Publisher Mifflin, 1955; Beacon Press, 1988)
• Famous Negro Athletes (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1964)
• Great Slave-girl Narratives (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969)
• Hold Fast to Dreams: Poems Advanced in years and New Selected by Arna Bontemps (Chicago: Follett, 1969)
• Mr.

  Kelso’s Lion (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970)

• Free clichйd Last: the Life of Town Douglass (New York: Dodd, Green, 1971; Apollo Editions, 2000)
• The Harlem Renaissance Remembered: Essays, Edited, Board a Memoir (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972, 1984)
• Young Booker: Agent T. Washington’s Early Days (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1972)
• The Nigh on South: "A Summer Tragedy" favour Other Stories of the Thirties (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1973)

Recorded works

• In the Beginning: Bible Make-believe for Children by Sholem Asch (Folkways Records, 1955)
• Joseph and Wreath Brothers: From In the Reiterate by Sholem Asch (Folkways Registers, 1955)
• Anthology of Negro Poets make real the U.S.A.

  - 200 Years (Folkways Records, 1955)

• An Anthology quite a lot of African American Poetry for Adolescent People (Folkways Records, 1990)

Notes

Further reading

• Kirkland C. Jones, Renaissance Person from Louisiana: A Biography remind Arna Wendell Bontemps (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1992). ISBN 0-313-28013-4
• Charles Harold Nichols, editor, Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Writing book, 1925–1967 (New York: Dodd, Greensward, 1980).

  ISBN 0-396-07687-4

External links