Marita Bonner
Marita Odette Bonner (1899-1971) was an influential African American writer and educator, noted for her contributions to literature during the early to mid-20th century. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she received a solid education, graduating from Radcliffe College with a focus on English and comparative literature. Bonner began her career as a teacher in West Virginia and later in Washington, D.C., where she engaged with a community of black writers. Her literary work spanned from 1925 to 1941, with notable pieces such as her essay "On Being Young—a Woman—and Colored," published by W. E. B. Du Bois, where she articulates the unique challenges faced by educated black women in America.
Bonner's body of work includes plays and short stories that explore themes of racial discrimination, poverty, and the struggles of African Americans in urban settings, particularly during the Great Migration. Despite her talent, her plays were never staged, highlighting the barriers faced by black female playwrights of her time. Nonetheless, Bonner's legacy influenced future generations of African American women writers and playwrights, contributing to a richer understanding of intersectionality in literature. She spent her later years raising a family and continued to make a mark in the literary world until her passing in Chicago. Her works remain significant for their social consciousness and portrayal of the African American experience.
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Subject Terms
Marita Bonner
Writer
- Born: June 16, 1899
- Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts
- Died: December 6, 1971
- Place of death: Chicago, Illinois
Bonner is known for her essay “On Being Young—a Woman—and Colored,” as well as short stories, sketches, and plays written from 1925 to 1941. She strikingly exposed the strictures American society imposed on women in general and African American women specifically. Her work depicted the racial divide in the country and the effects of that divide on black life.
Early Life
Marita Odette Bonner (mah-REE-tah oh-DEHT BAH-nuhr) was the second of four children of Joseph Andrew and Mary Anne (Noel) Bonner, born on June 16, 1899, in Boston, Massachusetts. She attended Brookline High School and received a fine education, learning music and foreign languages. After graduation, she entered Radcliffe College in 1918, where she majored in English and comparative literature and immersed herself in developing her writing skills. She participated in a writing seminar with a prominent writing professor of that day, Charles T. Copeland.
After college, Bonner began teaching in West Virginia, then moved to Washington, D.C., where she continued teaching at Armstrong High School. At this time she was able to interact with an ever-widening circle of black writers.
Life’s Work
Bonner was a versatile and productive writer who published literary pieces between 1925 and 1941. In 1925, W. E. B. Du Bois published her essay “On Being Young—a Woman—and Colored,” in which Bonner discusses the strictures imposed on American women in general and black women specifically. Bonner’s essay reflects a heightened social consciousness that articulates from an educated black woman’s perspective the burdens of being female and black. She bemoans the prejudices of white America and the expectations of race leaders for black achievers to be representatives of the race. She posits that race is not necessarily a coalescing agent. Her play The Purple Flower (1928) reenacts in a dreamlike way the racial divide, and her short stories illuminate the negative impact of poverty, discrimination, and exploitation on African American culture.
Many of Bonner’s short stories are set in a fictionalized urban community inhabited by a large concentration of migrant African Americans arriving from the South and new European immigrants converging in the same space. Frye Street is a major avenue within this setting. Through Bonner’s stories, readers become privy to the struggles of community members. Because the residents of this fictional environment struggle under the yoke of oppression, they often turn to debasement and debauchery: Spouses commit adultery, rebellious youth fornicate, preachers exercise greed and hypocrisy, and average workers turn to drinking and stealing. When the characters retreat inward and try to escape through their imaginations, they are misunderstood. Through the inner thoughts of many of the characters, readers realize that the desires of these downtrodden people are for the basic comforts of life: food, housing, a decent standard of living, and security.
On June 23, 1930, Bonner married William Almy Occomy in Cook County, Illinois. She continued writing for another decade, but marriage and parenthood redirected her focus. She devoted her energies to raising a family and teaching. Bonner died on December 6, 1971, in Chicago.
Significance
Bonner left extant a body of work that captured the lifestyle of newly arriving southern African Americans struggling to gain footing in an urban landscape in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Many of her writings share Du Bois’s notion of double consciousness; however, her work complicates this concept by adding gender to the mix. Bonner critiques American society from the point of view of an educated northern African American woman. Black playwrights generally found it difficult to win recognition for their dramas during the early decades of the twentieth century, but African American women playwrights faced an even more formidable barrier. When their plays were performed, they usually were staged in black churches and schools. In the case of Bonner, her three plays were never staged; however, she belonged to a coterie of black female playwrights who published plays during the early twentieth century. Georgia Douglas Johnson, Mary Burrill, Zora Neale Hurston, Eulalie Spence, May Miller, Shirley Graham Du Bois (then known as Shirley Graham), and Bonner were black female playwrights who wrote plays knowing that their work might never reach the stage. These women paved the way for a later generation of black women playwrights such as Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry, and Ntozake Shange. Changing attitudes and a more progressive racial climate permitted this younger generation of playwrights to see their plays staged commercially.
Bibliography
Bonner, Marita. Frye Street and Environs: The Collected Works of Marita Bonner. Compiled by Joyce Flynn. Boston: Beacon Press, 1987. This is the most complete collection of works by Bonner to date. Flynn contributes a comprehensive essay on Bonner’s works along with little-known facts about Bonner’s life. Also included in this work is a biography of Bonner written by her daughter, Joyce Occomy Stricklin.
Perkins, Kathy A., ed. Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays Before 1950. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Perkins has retrieved from obscurity the plays of seven black female playwrights writing during the early twentieth century. Her essay reveals how these women were influenced by one another.
Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph. Harlem’s Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900-1950. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. This work reprints Bonner’s essay “On Being Young—a Woman—and Colored” with brief introductory material that provides context for the “crisis” that the black community faced at the time. It also includes “—And I Passed By,” one of Bonner’s autobiographical writings not included in Frye Street and Environs.
Wall, Cheryl A. Women of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Wall examines how differently men and women of the Harlem Renaissance movement viewed their social position at the time by comparing Alain Locke’s lead essay in The New Negro and Bonner’s essay “On Being Young—a Woman—and Colored.”