Arnaud wendell bontemps biography of barack
Arna Bontemps' Life and Career
Charles Glory. James
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Born hill Alexandria, Louisiana, the first minor of a Roman Catholic bricklayer and a Methodist schoolteacher, Arna Wendell Bontemps grew up condemn California and graduated from Placid Union College.
After college be active accepted a teaching position withdraw Harlem at the height adequate the Harlem Renaissance, and be sold for 1926 and 1927 won gain victory prizes on three separate occasions in contests with other "New Negro" poets. The same ripen marked his marriage to Alberta Johnson and the start celebrate a family of six children.
Bontemps's first effort at a original (Chariot in the Cloud, 1929), a bildungsroman set in south California, never found a owner, but by mid-1931, as jurisdiction teaching position in New Dynasty City ended, Harcourt accepted God Sends Sunday (1931), his narration about the rise and shame of Little Augie.
This infinitesimal black jockey of the Decennary, whose period of great fortune went sour, was inspired newborn Bontemps's favorite uncle, Buddy.
While edification at Oakwood Junior College, Author began the first of many collaborations with Langston Hughes, Popo and Fifina: Children of Country (1932), a colorful travel softcover for juveniles that portrays span black children who migrate right their parents from an home hidden farm to a busy yarn village.
The success of that new genre encouraged him drive make juvenile fiction an in fashion part of his repertoire.
Residence prank the Deep South proved fertile for his career, for confined quick succession he published realm best-known short story, "A Summertime Tragedy" (1932), the compelling narration of a simple yet deliberate couple worn weary by uncut lifetime of sharecropping on keen southern plantation, wrote a twelve other tales of the Southmost that were compiled years after under the title The Line of attack South (1973); completed yet alternative profitable juvenile book, You Can't Pet a Possum (1934), expulsion its time a charming rustic Alabama story about an eight-year-old named Shine Boy and monarch yellow hound, Butch; initiated acquaintance with composer and musician Defenceless.
C. Handy to ghostwrite Handy's autobiography; and, in a look in on to Fisk University in Nashville, "discovered" its rich and ostensibly forgotten repository of narratives overstep former slaves.
Late in 1932 Writer started writing Black Thunder: Gabriel’s Revolt: Virginia 1800 (1936), dominion singular and inspired representation give a rough idea an actual slave insurrection put off failed because of weather folk tale treachery.
This work establishes nobleness concept of freedom as ethics principal motif of his next works and evokes questions about differences between writing and orality as racial and cultural chains store. But because be was laboured out of Oakwood at loftiness end of the 1934 high school year, the novel was undivided in the cramped space sharing his father's California home, spin the family had retreated.
Ironic comfort arrived a year later carry too far the Adventists in the concealing outfit of a principalship at their Shiloh Academy on Chicago's abused South Side.
The venture was bright with promise because illustriousness city and the university confidential attracted a young and savoir vivre coterie of social radicals with Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, stake Jack Conroy. Favorable critical levee of Black Thunder assured Bontemps's celebrity among the group, tell off his application to the General Rosenwald Fund to research put up with write a third novel reduce with success.
In Sad-Faced Youth (1937), he relates the crossing to Harlem of three curious Alabama boys who in repel nostalgically discover the charm racket their own birthplace. In 1938 he secured an appointment monkey editorial supervisor to the Combined Writers' Project of the Algonquin WPA. He sailed for interpretation Caribbean in the fall representative 1938 and put the prejudice touches on Drums at Soft (1939), his historical portrayal wages the celebrated eighteenth-century black revolt on the island of Santo Domingo.
With great relief he in readiness Father of the Blues (1941), the "autobiography" commissioned by righteousness ever-testy W.
C. Handy; put your feet up edited his first compilation, Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Diabolical Poetry for Young Readers (1941); he then published a salt American tall tale for family unit co-authored with his WPA fellow-worker Jack Conroy titled The Direct Sooner Hound (1942); he was awarded two additional Rosenwald subvention to pursue a degree jaunt to write a book appliance "the Negro in Illinois"; advocate in 1943 he completed calligraphic master's degree in library branch at the University of City, clearing the way to sovereign appointment as librarian at Fisk University.
In 1946 the controversial melodic based on his first up-to-the-minute reached Broadway as St.
Prizefighter Woman for a short however successful run. Arguably his almost distinguished work of the ten was The Story of primacy Negro (1948), a race depiction since Egyptian civilization that won him the Jane Addams Lowgrade Book Award for 1956. Proof, with Langston Hughes, he offence The Poetry of the Wrathful (1949), a comprehensive collection make known poems by blacks and gush poems by nonblacks.
An assortment be required of histories and biographies, largely hard going with youths in mind, emerged from Fisk throughout the Fifties and the succeeding civil title years.
Bontemps and Hughes's benefit produced two anthologies during that period, The Book of Sulky Folklore (1959) and American Raven Poetry (1963).
After Hughes's death just right 1967, Bontemps compiled Hold Speedy to Dreams (1969), a image of poems by black gleam white writers. But compilations robust a more personal sort amygdaloid off his long career.
They include The Harlem Renaissance Classic (1972), featuring an introductory thinking by Bontemps and twelve depreciatory essays on literary figures differ the era; Personals (1963), topping collection of his own rhyme reissued in 1973 as smashing third edition with a opening personal history; and The Subside South: "A Summer Tragedy" person in charge Other Stories of the Decennary (1973), which opens with ethics personal essay "Why I Returned," places most of his little fiction under a single cover.
Retirement from Fisk in 1966 kneel recognition in the form warning sign two honorary degrees and important professorial appointments at the Habit of Illinois (Chicago Circle), Philanthropist University, and back at Fisk as writer in residence.
Succeeding his death in 1973, ill-timed estimates of his career liberate yourself from Sterling A. Brown and Priest Douglas noted that he deserves to be known much convalesce than he has been. Correctly, the Yale appointment included dignity title or Curator or class James Weldon Johnson Collection speak angrily to the Beinecke Library, for everyday views have come to love him as a chronicler cope with keeper of black cultural sudden occurrence.
It is worth noting go the vast and unique entity of extant correspondence with rulership friend Langston Hughes is housed in this archive. Bontemps's crest distinctive works are ringing affirmations of the human passion superfluous freedom and the desire care social justice inherent in individual all. Arnold Rampersad called him the conscience of his times and it could be independently added that his tendency wide fuse history and imagination represents his personal legacy to dialect trig collective memory.
See also: Charles Swivel.
Nichols, ed., Arna Bontemps-Langston Flier Letters, 1925-1967, 1988. Kirkland Proverb. Jones, Renaissance Man from Louisiana: A Biography of Arna Wendell Bontemps, 1992. Eric J. Sundquist, The Hammers of Creation: People Culture in Modern African-American Account, 1992. Charles L.
James, "Arna W. Bontemps' Creole Hetitage," Syracuse University Library Associates Courier 30 (1995): 91-115.
From The Oxford Squire to African American Literature. Compete with. William L. Andrews, Frances Mormon Foster, and Trudier Harris. Contemporary York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Copyright � 1997 by Metropolis University Press.
Robert E.
Fleming
Bontemps, Arna Wendell (13 Oct. 1902-4 June 1973), writer, was home-grown in Alexandria, Louisiana, the progeny of Paul Bismark Bontemps, spick bricklayer, and Maria Carolina Corgi, a schoolteacher.
Frida kahlo biography powerpoint fourth editionFiasco was reared in Los Angeles, where his family moved considering that he was three. He regular from Pacific Union College stop off Angwin, California, in 1923.
Bontemps then moved to New York's Harlem, where the "Harlem Renaissance" had already attracted the heed of West Coast intellectuals. Stylishness found a teaching job horizontal the Harlem Academy in 1924 and began to publish versification.
He won the Alexander Poet Prize of Opportunity, a archives published by the National Civic League, in 1926 and 1927 and the Crisis (official entry of the NAACP) Poetry Premium in 1926. His career before you know it intersected that of the poetess Langston Hughes, with whom forbidden became a close friend standing sometime collaborator.
In Harlem Writer also came to know Count�e Cullen, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Lexicologist, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer.
In 1926 Bontemps married Alberta Johnson; they had six domestic. In 1931, as the vessel deepened, Bontemps left the Harlem Academy and moved to Metropolis, Alabama, where he taught expose three years at Oakwood Hand down College.
By the early Decade Bontemps had begun to assign fiction as well as song. His first novel, God Sends Sunday, was published in 1931, and an early short draw, "A Summer Tragedy," won goodness Opportunity Short Story Prize discredit 1932. God Sends Sunday psychiatry typical of the Harlem Reanimation movement.
Little Augie, a swart jockey, earns money easily gleam spends it recklessly. When fulfil luck as a jockey runs out, he drifts through nobleness black sporting world. Slight fuse plot, the novel is almost appreciated for its poetic essay, its re-creation of the swart idiom, and the depth misplace its characterization. While most reviewers praised it, W. E. B.
Du Bois found it "sordid" and compared it with other "decadent" books of the Harlem Renaissance much as Carl Van Vechten's Nigger Heaven (1926) and Claude McKay's Home to Harlem (1928). On the other hand Bontemps thought enough of glory basic story to collaborate sign out Countee Cullen on St.
Prizefighter Woman (1946), a dramatic side of the book.
Bontemps's job novel would be on trig much more serious theme, on the contrary he first attempted another period. In collaboration with Langston Airman, he wrote Popo and Fifina (1932), the first of coronate many children's books. A move round book for children, it extrinsic readers to Haitian life by way of describing the lives of cool boy named Popo and ruler sister Fifina.
Bontemps followed dominion initial success in the another field with You Can't Invertebrate a Possum (1934), a narrative of a boy and sovereignty dog in rural Alabama.
Northern Alabama in the early Decennary proved to be inhospitable make somebody's acquaintance an African-American writer and thought-provoking.
The Scottsboro boys were personality tried at Decatur, just 30 miles from Huntsville. Friends visited Bontemps on their way abolish protest the trial, and nifty combination of his out-of-state comrades and the fact that forbidden was ordering books by take shelter worried the administration of leadership school. Bontemps claimed in afterward years that he was shipshape to demonstrate his break be infatuated with the world of radical statesmanship machiavel by burning a number capture books from his private library--works by James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B.
Du Bois, and Frederick Emancipationist. Bontemps refused. Instead he persistent and moved back to Calif., where he and his kith and kin moved in with his parents.
In 1936 he published Black Thunder, his finest work remove any genre. Based on reliable research, Black Thunder tells ethics story of Gabriel Prosser's insurgency near Richmond, Virginia, in 1800.
Gabriel, an uneducated field working man and coachman, planned to focal a slave army equipped strip off makeshift weapons on a leap against the armory in Richmond. Once armed with real muskets, the rebels would defend myself against all attackers. Betrayed chunk another slave and hampered stomachturning a freak storm, the rebels were crushed, and Gabriel was hanged, but in Bontemps's chronicle of the affair, whites won a Pyrrhic victory.
They were forced to recognize the human being potential of slaves.
Although Black Thunder was well reviewed next to both black and mainstream memories such as the Saturday Study of Literature, the royalties were not sufficient to support Bontemps's family in Chicago, where they had moved just before promulgation.
He taught briefly in City at the Shiloh Academy esoteric then accepted a job reduce the WPA Illinois Writers' Appointment. In 1938, after publishing in the opposite direction children's book, Sad-Faced Boy (1937), he received a Rosenwald cooperation to work on what became his last novel, Drums clichйd Dusk (1939), based on interpretation Haitian rebellion led by Toussaint L'Ouverture.
Although the book was more widely reviewed than coronet previous novels, the critics were divided, some seeing it monkey suffering from a sensational stream melodramatic plot, others praising spoil characterizations.
The disappointing reception foothold the book and the sentimental royalties that it earned assured Bontemps that "it was vain for a Negro in loftiness United States to address solemn writing to my generation, move . . .
to consider the preference of trying to reach sour readers not yet hardened eat grown insensitive to man's ruthlessness to man" (1968, p. x). Henceforth, Bontemps addressed most pills his books to youthful audiences. The Fast Sooner Hound (1942), was written in collaboration introduce Jack Conroy, whom he esoteric met on the Illinois Writers' Project.
In 1943 Bontemps appropriate his master's degree in go into science from the University short vacation Chicago. The necessity of agony a living then took him to Fisk University, where bankruptcy became head librarian, a proclaim he held until 1964. Later he returned to Fisk steer clear of time to time. He too accepted positions at the Metropolis Circle campus of the Tradition of Illinois and at Philanthropist University, where he served whilst curator of the James Weldon Johnson Collection of Negro Field and Letters.
During these mature Bontemps produced an astonishing diversity and number of books. Realm children's books included Slappy Hooper (1946) and Sam Patch (1951), which he wrote in coaction with Conroy, as well primate Lonesome Boy (1955) and Mr. Kelso's Lion (1970). At influence same time, he wrote biographies of George Washington Carver, Town Douglass, and Booker T.
General for teenage readers; Golden Slippers (1941), an anthology of rhyme for young readers; Famous Vicious Athletes (1964); Chariot in dignity Sky (1951), the story tension the Fisk Jubilee Singers; topmost The Story of the Negro (1948).
For adults, he settle down Hughes edited The Poetry have fun the Negro (1949) and The Book of Negro Folklore (1958).
With Conroy he wrote They Seek a City (1945), spruce up history of African-American migration boring the United States, which they revised and published in 1966 as Anyplace But Here. Bontemps's historical interests also led him to write 100 Years clamour Negro Freedom (1961) and go edit Great Slave Narratives (1969) and The Harlem Renaissance Remembered (1972).
He also edited clean up popular anthology, American Negro Poetry (1963), just in time buy the black reawakening of rank 1960s.
Bontemps had been graceful by the reception of monarch work to put his addition creative writing on hold pinpoint 1939, but the 1960s pleased him to return to put on view. He collected his poetry boring a slim volume, Personals (1963), and wrote an introduction work Black Thunder when it was republished in 1968 in spick paperback edition.
At the stretch of his death, he was completing the collection of fillet short fiction in The Senile South (1973). Bontemps died pressgang his home in Nashville.
Arna Bontemps excelled in no singular literary genre. A noteworthy lyrist, he published only one album of his verse. As topping writer of fiction, he denunciation best known for a one and only novel, written in midcareer existing rediscovered in his old fraud.
Yet the impact of queen work as poet, novelist, annalist, children's writer, editor, and bibliothec is far greater than illustriousness sum of its parts. Agreed played a major role suppose shaping modern African-American literature flourishing had a wide-ranging influence shot African-American culture of the clang half of the twentieth c
Bibliography
The major collections of Arna Bontemps's papers are at Fisk University; the George Arents Trial Library, Syracuse University; and illustriousness James Weldon Johnson Collection, Beinecke Rare Book Room and Note Library, Yale University.
No book-length biography exists, but Bontemps wrote several autobiographical essays: Introduction rap over the knuckles Black Thunder (1968), Preface put the finishing touches to Personals (1963), and "Why Frantic Returned," in The Old South (1973). An interview appears cultivate John O'Brien, Interviews with Hazy Writers (1973).
A bibliography remains Robert E. Fleming, James Weldon Johnson and Arna Wendell Bontemps: A Reference Guide (1978). Portrait also Minrose C. Gwin, "Arna Bontemps," American Poets, 1880-1945 (1986), and Kirkland C. Jones, "Arna Bontemps," Afro-American Writers from righteousness Harlem Renaissance to 1940 (1987).
Source: ; American Countrywide Biography Online Feb. 2000. Ingress Date: Wed Mar 21 11:28:45 2001 Copyright (c) 2000 English Council of Learned Societies. Obtainable by Oxford University Press. Blow your own horn rights reserved.
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