Great slave narratives arna bontemps biography

American poet, novelist (–)

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

Early life

Bontemps was born in in Alexandria, Louisiana, into a Louisiana Creole family. His ancestors included free people of color and French colonists. His father was a contractor and sometimes would take his son to construction sites. As the boy got older, his father would take him along to speak-easies at night that featured jazz.^[3] His mother, Maria Carolina Pembroke, was a schoolteacher.^[4] The family was Catholic, and Bontemps was baptized at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral.^[5] They would later become Seventh-day Adventists.

When Bontemps was three years old, his family moved to Los Angeles, California, in the Great Migration of blacks out of the South and into cities of the North, Midwest and West. They settled in wha Countee cullen biography.