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Born in
Louisiana and raised in California, Arna Bontemps
(1902-1973) moved to New York in 1923 after graduating from
Pacific Union College. He became a highly regarded poet and
novelist during the Harlem Renaissance, the progressive
black cultural movement of the 1920s. Bontemps also wrote a
number of children’s books, including The Story of the
Negro (1948), which was a Newbery Honor Book and
received the Jane Addams Book Award.
In 1924, Bontemps met and became good friends with famed
Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes, who also had a
penchant for writing children’s literature. During the 1930s
and early 1940s, the two writers collaborated in creating
books with international themes that would inspire, educate,
and delight young readers. Drawn to Mexican culture through
the influence of his former Mexican neighbors, his teaching
high school Spanish, and his in-laws’ Mexican ranch,
Bontemps partnered with Hughes in writing two books
featuring Mexican characters. Not picked up by major
publishers for decades, The Pasteboard Bandit was
published posthumously in 1997. Boy of the Border
will be published in October, 2009 by Sweet Earth Flying
Press.
As a scholar, anthologist, and librarian, Bontemps
spearheaded efforts to acknowledge and preserve
African-American literature and culture. His birthplace in
Alexandria, Louisiana was converted to the Bontemps
African-American Museum, a stop on the Louisiana
African-American Heritage Trail. Bontemps died suddenly in
1973 before he could finish writing his autobiography.
The best-known and often-quoted poet of the Harlem
Renaissance, Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was
also a prolific novelist, short story writer, playwright,
journalist, and author of children’s books. Born in 1902 in
Joplin, Missouri and raised in Kansas, Illinois and Ohio,
Hughes spent time in Mexico during his youth visiting his
father who moved there when Langston was a year old. Hughes
traveled the world and then made his home in New York,
before attending and graduating from Lincoln University in
Oxford, Pennsylvania in 1929.
He then moved back to New York where he had become a leading
figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes’ friendship with
Arna Bontemps blossomed professionally into the
collaborative writing of children’s books, an undertaking to
which both had an affinity. The first juvenile works by
Hughes—including poem “Winter Sweetness” (1920) and essay
“In a Mexican City” (1921)—were published in The Brownies
Book, a children’s magazine sponsored by the staff of
the NAACP. Following Hughes’ 1931 trip to Haiti, Hughes and
Bontemps wrote their first children’s book together. The
success of Popo and Fifina, a story about two Haitian
children, encouraged the two writers to continue co-writing
children’s books. Hughes’ desire to write uplifting juvenile
stories, especially for children of color, as well as his
fascination with Mexico, influenced the decision by the two
writers to create two books featuring Mexican characters and
culture: The Pasteboard Bandit (1997) and Boy
of the Border (to be published in 2009).
Hughes died in 1967 after a life devoted to the arts and
social activism. In 2002, the United States Postal Service
created a Langston Hughes stamp commemorating the centennial
of Hughes’ birth.
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Arna Bontemps (left), Langston Hughes
(right)
Photo by Griffith
Davis. Photo courtesy of the Yale Collection of American
Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the
Estates of Alberta Bontemps and Langston Hughes, and Photos
by Griff Davis.
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