Renaissance Man from Louisiana: A Biography of Arna Wendell BontempsIn his youth a prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Arna Wendell Bontemps matured into a renaissance man in the broadest sense, a person fully engaged in the life of the intellect. He contributed vastly to the culture of his era through his own writings--fiction, plays, poetry, children's books, scholarship, and criticism--and advanced it through teaching, librarianship, and as a sponsor and patron of other artists. This detailed and fond biography provides a thorough analysis of Bontemps's private and public lives. Author Kirkland Jones is effective at portraying Bontemps's Creole family background and childhood in Louisiana and California, his roles as rebellious but devoted son and loving and supportive husband and father, his fertile contributions to the arts, and his abiding commitment to service, which is perhaps most in evidence in his building of African-American library collections at Fisk University. |
