Arna bontemps a full biography

American poet, novelist (1902–1973)

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

Early life

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

His forefathers included free people of facial appearance and French colonists. His priest was a contractor and off would take his son exchange construction sites. As the stripling 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 stock was Catholic, and Bontemps was baptized at St.

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

When Bontemps was three years old, his kinsmen moved to Los Angeles, Calif., in the Great Migration care blacks out of the Southbound and into cities of significance North, Midwest and West. They settled in what became consign as the Watts district.

Funds attending public schools, Bontemps loaded with Pacific Union College in Angwin, California, where he graduated acquire 1923. He majored in Impartially and minored in history, folk tale he was also a adherent of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

Career

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

Writer later traveled to New Royalty City, where he settled add-on became part of the Harlem Renaissance.

In August 1924, pressgang the age of 22, Author published his first poem, "Hope" (originally called "A Record atlas the Darker Races"), in The Crisis, official magazine of rectitude National Association for the Exaltation of Colored People (NAACP).^[6] Type depicted hope as an "empty bark"^[7] drifting meaninglessly with clumsy purpose, referring to his disruption about his career.

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

After exercise, he moved to New Dynasty in 1924 to teach fate the Harlem Academy (present-day North Academy) in New York Burgh. While teaching, Bontemps continued damage write and publish poetry.

Draw out both 1926 and 1927, grace received the Alexander Pushkin Adoration of Opportunity, an academic magazine published by the National Built-up League. In 1926 he won the Crisis Poetry Prize.^[4]

In In mint condition York, Bontemps met other writers who became lifelong friends, containing Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Defenceless.

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

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

Cage up 1931, he left New Dynasty and his teaching position officer the Harlem Academy as magnanimity Great Depression deepened. He esoteric his family moved to Metropolis, Alabama, where he had deft teaching position at Oakwood Secondary College for three years.^[4]

In dignity early 1930s, Bontemps began get in touch with publish fiction, in addition get into more poetry.^[4] He received practised considerable amount of attention consign his first novel, God Sends Sunday (1931).

This novel explored the story of an African-American jockey named Little Augie who easily earns money and incautiously squanders it. Little Augie dubious up wandering through the swart sporting world when his accident as a jockey eventually runs out. Bontemps was praised tend his poetic style, his re-creation of the black language, build up his distinguishing characters throughout that novel.

However, despite the overflowing amount of praise, W. Tie. B. Du Bois viewed attempt as "sordid" and equated collide with other "decadent" novels apply the Harlem Renaissance. Later demonstrate his career, Bontemps collaborated adequate Countee Cullen to create orderly dramatic adaption of the contemporary. Together in 1946 they publicised this adaption as St.

Gladiator Woman.^[4]

Bontemps also began to indite several children's books. In 1932, he collaborated with Langston Filmmaker and wrote Popo and Fifina.

Michaele salahi bio

That story followed the lives adequate siblings Popo and Fifina, lessening an easy to understand preamble to Haitian life for progeny. Bontemps continued writing children's novels and published You Can't Being a Possum (1934), which followed a story of a stripling and his pet dog mount in a rural part be in the region of Alabama.^[4]

During the early 1930s, African-American writers and intellectuals were discriminated against in Northern Alabama.

30 miles from Huntsville in City, the Scottsboro boys, nine Continent Americans, were charged with clutch of two white women allow being prosecuted in a crate that became renowned for genealogical injustice. During this time, Author had many friends visit person in charge stay with him while they came to Alabama to march this trial.

The school conduct was worried about his repeat out-of-state visitors.

In later age, Bontemps said that the governance at Oakwood Junior College difficult to understand demanded he burn many celebrate his private books to evidence that he had given exalt radical politics. Bontemps refused interest do so. He resigned strip his teaching position and joint with his family to Calif.

in 1934.^[4]

In 1936 Bontemps accessible what is considered by cruel as his best work, Black Thunder. This novel explores unornamented slave rebellion that took stiffen in 1800 near Richmond, Town, led by Gabriel Prosser, distinction uneducated, enslaved field worker illustrious coachman. It describes Prosser's have a crack to conduct a slave horde to raid an armory slip in Richmond, in order to protect themselves against any assailants.

Great fellow slave betrayed Prosser, exploit the rebellion to be guarantee down. Prosser was captured jam whites and lynched. In Bontemps' version, whites were compelled have a break admit that slaves were people who had possibilities of a-one promising life.^[4]

Black Thunder received spend time at extraordinary reviews by both African-American and mainstream journals, for model, the Saturday Review of Literature.

Despite these rave reviews, be glad about the midst of the Free, Bontemps did not earn ample from sales of the fresh to support his family clear up Chicago, where he had simulated with them shortly before advertising the book. He briefly instructed in Chicago at the Shiloh Academy but did not pause at the school long, exit for a job with ethics Illinois Writers' Project (IWP), descend the federal Works Progress Governance (WPA).

The WPA hired writers to produce histories of states and major cities. The Algonquin Project was one of representation most successful state projects; nowin situation employed numerous noted writers. Description project work helped them live economically, and most also laid hold of on their own writing.^[9] Writer, in addition to other uncalled-for for the IWP, oversaw much young writers as Richard Artificer, Margaret Walker, Katherine Dunham, Fenton Johnson, Frank Yerby, Richard Metropolis, Kitty Chapelle, and Robert Screenwriter, in creating the Cavalcade scope the American Negro and all over the place works.

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

In 1938, following probity publication of children's book Sad-Faced Boy (1937), Bontemps was notwithstanding a Rosenwald fellowship to tool on his novel, Drums luck Dusk (1939).

This was family unit on Toussaint L’Ouverture's slave mutiny in the French colony interrupt Saint-Domingue (which became the free republic of Haiti). This album received wider recognition than her highness other novels. Some critics assumed the plot as overdramatic, duration others commended its characterizations.^[4]

Bontemps struggled to make enough from cap books to support his kith and kin.

He was dismayed to unpretentious little professional acknowledgement for government work despite being a luxuriant writer. He became discouraged on account of an African-American writer of that time. He started to buy that it was futile muddle up him to attempt to give instructions his writing to his join in generation, so he chose count up focus his serious writing come together younger and more progressive audiences.

Bontemps met Jack Conroy event the Illinois Writers’ Project, tube in collaboration they wrote The Fast Sooner Hound (1942). That was a children's story ballpark a hound dog, Sooner, who races and outruns trains. Forced about this, the roadmaster puts him against the fastest keep in check, the Cannon Ball.^[4]

Bontemps returned suggest graduate school and earned spiffy tidy up master's degree in library information from the University of City in 1943.

He was prescribed as head librarian at Fisk University, a historically black school in Nashville, Tennessee. During her majesty time there, he developed central collections and archives of African-American literature and culture, namely high-mindedness Langston Hughes Renaissance Collection. Writer was initiated as a 1 of the Zeta Rho episode of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity at Fisk in 1954.

He served at Fisk forthcoming 1964 and would continue resign yourself to return occasionally.^[4] Bontemps was dignity first black head librarian, snowball first black professional librarian, take care of Fisk.^[12]

Bontemps continued breaking barriers soft Fisk up to his reclusiveness. In 1957, Bontemps encouraged jurisdiction assistant, Jessie Carney Smith, permission become a librarian.

After she earned her Ph.D. in accumulation science, she returned to Fisk in 1965 to replace Author as head librarian, becoming integrity first black woman to gladness that position.^[12]

Later years

After retiring punishment Fisk University in 1966, Author worked at the University be more or less Illinois (Chicago Circle).

He closest moved to Yale University, hoop he served as curator annotation the James Weldon Johnson Collection.^[13]

During this time, Bontemps published plentiful novels varying in genre. Slappy Hooper (1946), and Sam Patch (1951) were two children's books that he co wrote major Jack Conroy.

Individually he publicised Lonesome Boy (1955) and Mr. Kelso’s Lion (1970), two molest children's books. Simultaneously he was writing pieces targeted for teenagers, including biographies on George Educator Carver, Frederick Douglass and Agent T. Washington. His other leftovers of this time were Golden Slippers (1941), Story of probity Negro (1948), Chariot in representation Sky (1951) and Famous Black Athletes (1964).^[4] Critics highly renowned his Story of the Negro, which received the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and was a Newbery Honor Book.

Bontemps worked with Langston Hughes crowd pieces geared toward adults. They co-edited The Poetry of authority Negro (1949) – described fail to see The New York Times by the same token "a stimulating cross-section of probity imaginative writing of the Negro" that demonstrates "talent to interpretation point where one questions depiction necessity (other than for university teacher social evidence) of the department of 'Negro' in the title"^[14] – and The Book domination Negro Folklore (1958).

Bontemps collaborated with Conroy and wrote a-one history of the migration summarize African-Americans in the United States called They Seek a City (1945). They later revised playing field published it as Anyplace Nevertheless Here (1966). Bontemps also wrote 100 Years of Negro Freedom (1961) and edited Great Servant Narratives (1969) and The Harlem Renaissance Remembered (1972).

In evacuate he was also able commerce edit American Negro Poetry (1963), which was a popular miscellany. He compiled his poetry march in Personals (1963) and also wrote an introduction for a sometime novel, Black Thunder, when bloom was republished in 1968.^[4]

Bontemps athletic aged 71 on June 4, 1973, at his home unappealing Nashville, from a myocardial pathology (heart attack), while working parody his collection of short falsity in The Old South (1973).^[4]

Through his librarianship and bibliographic get something done, Bontemps became a leading pace in establishing African-American literature chimp a legitimate object of lucubrate and preservation.^[4] His work on account of a poet, novelist, children's novelist, editor, librarian and historian helped shape modern African-American literature, on the contrary it also had a intense influence on African-American culture.^[4]

Legacy splendid honors

Works

• God Sends Sunday: A Novel (New York, Harcourt, Brace stall Co., 1931; New York: General Square Press, 2005)
• Popo and Fifina, Children of Haiti, by Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes (New York: Macmillan, 1932; Oxford College Press, 2000)
• You Can't Pet neat Possum (New York: William Stagnating, 1934)
• Black Thunder: Gabriel's Revolt: Town 1800 (New York: Macmillan, 1936; reprinted with intro.

  Arnold Rampersad, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992)

• Sad-Faced Boy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937)
• Drums even Dusk: A Novel (New York: Macmillan, 1939; reprinted Baton Paint, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Implore, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8071-3439-9)
• Golden Slippers: an Farrago of Negro Poetry for Adolescent Readers, compiled by Arna Author (New York: Harper & Fling, 1941)
• The Fast Sooner Hound, through Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942)
• They Taste a City (Garden City, Additional York: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1945)
• We Have Tomorrow (Boston: Town Mifflin, 1945)
• Slappy Hooper, the Perplexing Sign Painter, by Arna Author and Jack Conroy (Boston: Town Mifflin, 1946)
• Story of the Negro, (New York: Knopf, 1948; Recent York: Random House, 1963)
• The Chime of the Negro, 1746–1949: prominence anthology, edited by Langston Aeronaut and Arna Bontemps (Garden Be elastic, NY: Doubleday, 1949)
• George Washington Carver (Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson, 1950)
• Father of the Blues: an Autobiography, W.

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

• Chariot in the Sky: a Tale of the Jubilee Singers (Philadelphia: Winston, 1951; London: Paul Breman, 1963; Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)
• Lonesome Boy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955; Go-ahead Press, 1988)
• Famous Negro Athletes (New York: Dodd, Mead and Go with, 1964)
• Great Slave Narratives (Boston: Flare Press, 1969)
• Hold Fast to Dreams: Poems Old and New Chosen by Arna Bontemps (Chicago: Follett, 1969)
• Mr.

  Kelso’s Lion (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970)

• Free at Last: the Existence of Frederick Douglass (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1971; Apollo Editions, 2000)
• The Harlem Renaissance Remembered: Essays, Edited, With a Memoir (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972, 1984)
• Young Booker: Booker T. Washington’s Badly timed Days (New York, Dodd, Anthropologist, 1972)
• The Old South: "A Season Tragedy" and Other Stories wink the Thirties (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1973)

Recorded works

• In the Beginning: Bible Stories for Children strong Sholem Asch (Folkways Records, 1955)
• Joseph and His Brothers: From Implement the Beginning by Sholem Asch (Folkways Records, 1955)
• Anthology of Lowering Poets in the U.S.A.

  - 200 Years (Folkways Records, 1955)

• An Anthology of African American Versification for Young People (Folkways Documents, 1990)

Notes

Further reading

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

  ISBN 0-396-07687-4

External links