Description
Book SynopsisExplores the role of writer Gwendolyn Bennett as an important contributor to the Harlem Renaissance. Includes Bennett’s published and unpublished poetry, fiction, essays, diaries, letters, and artwork.
Trade Review“This superbly edited collection will introduce many readers to a more versatile and accomplished Gwendolyn Bennett than they have known before. It includes the unpublished political poetry that extends her range and impact, making her a key figure of the 1930s.”
—Cary Nelson,author of Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory, 1910–1945
“Wheeler and Parascandola have done a great service in finding and gathering work by Bennett, an important writer, editor, and artist who has received much less attention than she deserves.”
—C. A. Bily Choice
Table of ContentsContents
Foreword by Maureen Honey
Acknowledgments
Note on the Text
Bennett Timeline
Introduction
Published Work
Poetry
Introduction
Nocturne (1923)
Heritage (1923)
To Usward (1924)
Song (1925)
Street Lamps in Early Spring (1926)
Hatred (1926)
Lines Written at the Grave of Alexander Dumas (1926)
Moon Tonight (1926)
Dear Things (1926)
Advice (1927)
Fantasy (1927)
Quatrains (1927)
Secret (1927)
To a Dark Girl (1927)
Epitaph (1934)
Art
Introduction
Painting
Untitled [River Landscape] (1931)
Magazine Covers
Pipes of Pan (March 1924)
Untitled (January 1926)
Untitled (July 1926)
Short Stories
Introduction
Wedding Day (1926)
Tokens (1927)
Editorials
Introduction
The Ebony Flute (August 1926)
The Ebony Flute (April 1927)
The Ebony Flute (July 1927)
The Ebony Flute (September 1927)
The Ebony Flute (April 1928)
Reviews
Introduction
Heartbreak and North Carolina Sunshine: The Lonesome Road— by Paul Green (1926)
Blue-Black Symphony: Home to Harlem, by Claude McKay (1928)
Banjo, by Claude McKay (1929)
Plum-Bun, by Jessie Redmon Fauset (1929)
The Emperors Jones (1930)
Cultural and Social Articles
Introduction
The Future of the Negro in Art (1924)
The American Negro Paints (1928)
The Plight of the Negro Is Tragic (1934)
I Go to Camp (1934)
The Harlem Artists Guild (1937)
Unpublished Work
Poetry
Introduction
Two Poems (1925)
Thin Laughter (1928)
Train Monotony (1928)
Dirge for a Free Spirit (1933)
Fulfillment (1935) 000
[Give me your hand, beloved] (1935)
I Build America (1938)
Sweat (1938)
Wise Guys (1938)
The Hungry Ones (1938)
Threnody for Spain (1939)
[Across a room when other ones are there] (n.d.)
[Rapacious women who sit on steps at night] (n.d.)
[So this is how it is] (n.d.)
Unfinished Novel
Introduction
Chapter Outline for the Unfinished Novel The Call (n.d.)
Excerpts from The Call (1928–1932)
Essays
Introduction
My Father’s Story (n.d.)
[Ward Place] (1941)
Lancaster, Pa. (n.d.)
Let’s Go: In Gay Paree! (n.d.)
25 (n.d.)
[Life as a Javanese] (n.d.)
[Ku Klux Klan Rides] (n.d.)
Last Night I Nearly Killed My Husband! (n.d.)
[Harlem Reflection] (n.d.)
Diaries
Introduction
France
June 26, 1925
July 26, 1925
August 2, [1925]
August 8, [1925]
September 27, [19]25
September 28, 1925
April 29, 1926
United States
[April 7,] 1936
April 8, 1936
April 9, 1936
April 18, 1936
May 7, 1936
January 3, 1937
June 19, 1985
January 3, 1937
June 19, 1958
Correspondence
Introduction
Literary Friends
To W. E. B. Du Bois (January 19, 1925)
To Countee Cullen (August 28, 1925)
To Langston Hughes (December 2, 1925)
To Countee Cullen (January 14, 1926)
To Harold Jackman (February 23, 1926)
To Langston Hughes (1926)
To Claude McKay (February 25, 1937)
To James Weldon Johnson (January 4, 1938)
To Alain Locke (May 11, 1939)
To Richard Wright (March 3, 1940)
To Alain Locke (November 30, 1941)
To Langston Hughes (May 13, 1942)
Family and Associates
To Joshua Bennett and Marechal Neil Bennett (January 5, 1925)
To Marechal Neil Bennett (March 24, 1925)
To Joshua Bennett (May 17, 1925)
To Marechal Neil Bennett (July 27, 1928)
To James Vernon Herring (September 9, 1937)
To Mayme (Abernathy) Pizarro (August 31, 1938)
To Flora Dugan (October 6, 1947)
To Everyone (September 27, 1968)
Notes
Bibliography
Index
