Bontemps, Arna (b. 13 October 1902) Reference library
Encyclopedia of African American History 1896 to the Present
..., Arna ( b. 13 October 1902 ; d. 4 June 1973 ), poet , anthologist , and librarian during the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Alexandria, Louisiana, from age three Arna Wendell Bontemps grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. After attending public schools there, he attended Pacific Union College in Angwin, California, graduating in 1923 . After college Bontemps, who had already begun writing, moved to New York City and became a teacher in Harlem. Like his contemporary Arthur A. Schomburg , Bontemps excavated the rich cultural heritage of the...
Bontemps, Arna (1902–1973) Reference library
The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature
...archive. Bontemps's most distinctive works are ringing affirmations of the human passion for freedom and the desire for social justice inherent in us all. Arnold Rampersad called him the conscience of his era and it could be fairly added that his tendency to fuse history and imagination represents his personal legacy to a collective memory. Charles H. Nichols , ed., Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters, 1925–1967, 1988. Kirkland C. Jones , Renaissance Man from Louisiana: A Biography of Arna Wendell Bontemps, 1992. Charles L. James , “Arna W. Bontemps' Creole...
Bontemps, Arna (1902–73) Quick reference
The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature (2 ed.)
..., Arna ( Wendell ) ( 1902–73 ) , author of poetry, stories, histories, novels, and children’s books depicting Black culture and themes of freedom and social justice. Bontemps was born in Louisiana, educated in California, and, as a young adult, moved to New York, where he became a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance alongside Langston Hughes , W. E. B. Du Bois , Claude McKay , and Zora Neale Hurston . He earned a master’s degree in Library Science from the University of Chicago and became librarian of Fisk University, where he helped to...
Bontemps, Arna Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English
..., Arna ( 1902–73 ), American poet , short-story writer , and novelist , born in Alexandria, Louisiana, educated at Pacific Union College, California and at the University of Chicago. He moved to the Harlem district of New York at the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, where he became well known as a poet. Most of his poems were published in the 1920s for periodicals such as The Crisis and were collected in Personals ( 1963 ). Though terse in a modernist manner, his poems also echo cadences from traditional African-American Christianity. In the...
Bontemps, Arna Wendell Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature
..., Arna Wendell ( 1902–1973 ), African American author and anthologist. A high school teacher and college librarian, Louisiana-born Arna Bontemps spent several years in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance. He collaborated with his friend Langston Hughes in writing his first juvenile book, Popo and Fifina: Children of Haiti ( 1932 ). Throughout his career, Bontemps wrote books for both adults and children, breaking barriers by compiling one of the first African American poetry collections for children ( Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Negro...
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Bontemps, Arna [Wendell] Reference library
The Oxford Companion to American Literature (6 ed.)
..., Arna [Wendell] ( 1902–73 ), Louisiana-born author, educated in California, received an M.A. from the University of Chicago, and was librarian of Fisk University. His novels about his black people include God Sends Sunday ( 1931 ), about a jockey, dramatized with Countee Cullen as St. Louis Woman ( 1946 ); Black Thunder ( 1936 ), about a slave revolt in Virginia in 1800 ; Drums at Dusk ( 1939 ), about the slave revolt and emancipation in Haiti; and many children's books, including Sam Patch ( 1951 ), written with Jack Conroy . His...
Bontemps, Arna
Wallace Thurman
God Sends Sunday
Effie Lee Newsome
Sarah Webster Fabio
Haki R. Madhubuti
Samuel W. Allen
Popo and Fifina
Fenton Johnson
Ted Joans
Federal Writers' Project
Frank Yerby
Margaret Walker
