The Lonesome Boy theme as emblem for Arna Bontemps's children's literature.

In a letter dated March 2, 1955, Langston Hughes wrote his longtime friend Arna Bontemps to congratulate him on the publication of Bontemps's latest children's book: "Lonesome Boy is a perfectly charming and unusual book. I read it right off[;] it came in the mail today. I LOVE books that short and easy and pretty to read. It ought to make a wonderful gift book" (Nichols 330). Bontemps himself had written Hughes about the book a little more than a year earlier (on December 10, 1953): "This is the book I enjoyed writing, perhaps because I did it impulsively for myself, while editors hounded me for my misdeeds and threatened me if I did not deliver manuscripts I had contracted for. So I closed the door for two days and had myself a time" (Nichols 319). Another, perhaps more valid, reason he wrote this particular story about Bubber, a boy so lonesome he plays his trumpet whenever and wherever he can - ending up, as his grandfather subsequently explains, at a devil's ball - stems from Bontemps's own nostalgic feelings about his Louisiana heritage and, more specifically, about his own sense of being a lonesome boy.

A careful look at Bontemps's work shows the lonesome boy theme appearing over several years and in different forms. For example, Bontemps wrote a version of the story, "Lonesome Boy, Silver Trumpet," in the 1930s, but it was not published until his collection of short fiction The Old South: "A Summer Tragedy" and Other Stories of the Thirties appeared a few weeks after his death in 1973. And on May 5, 1966, he delivered a speech at the New York Public Library which was published in December of that year as "The Lonesome Boy Theme" in The Horn Book magazine. There, he states that he has often used the theme, particularly to reflect on himself, since he began writing fiction:

With me the lonesome-boy theme has persisted. Consciously or unconsciously, it too reflects influences. I used to avoid the first[-]person[-]singular in my writing; for some reason or other it embarrassed me. But despite my efforts - despite careful stratagems - I am afraid I did not always avoid autobiography. Born in Louisiana, carried by my parents to California at a very early age, I suspect that it is myself I see as I look back in each of the guises in which the lonesome boy has appeared since I introduced him in God Sends Sunday, my first book. (674)

Bontemps's use of the lonesome boy theme applies mainly to his children's literature, even though he clearly wrote God Sends Sunday for adult audiences.

While it would be facile to claim that all of his works - either for adults or children - reveal this autobiographical theme, his use of the theme suggests a reason behind the author's interest in writing for the young. A close examination of Bontemps's Lonesome Boy, therefore, can help explain his motivation to become one of the first authors of the twentieth century to write books for young African Americans. It can also explain some of his disillusionment with adult books and with the economics of the publishing world, which was still dominated by white publishers and white readers during the 1930s, even though the Harlem Renaissance would usher in permanent change.

Bontemps, at least temporarily, was shown to a bad seat during the 1930s. All three of his adult novels - God Sends Sunday (1931), Black Thunder (1936), and Drums at Dusk (1939) - appeared during the Great Depression; none sold well. And even though he proposed several other novels and wrote at least one full-length, unpublished novel between 1939 and 1973, when he died, he did not publish an adult novel after Drums at Dusk. Chariot in the Sky (1951), Bontemps's semi-fictional account of the famous Fisk University Jubilee Singers, straddles the line between adolescent and adult material, although it was published as a book for older adolescents. As we shall see, economics as well as politics and autobiographical impulses motivated Bontemps to write for juvenile readers.

For public consumption, Bontemps justified his turn to juvenile writing from poetry and adult fiction with the claim that his novels were falling on blind eyes. Consider, for example, his "Introduction to the 1968 edition of Black Thunder," made more timely because of the Civil Rights Movement and the riotous explosions of anger in many American cities, including Watts, where Bontemps had lived as a child. Referring to the 1930s, he writes, "I began to suspect it was fruitless for a Negro in the United States to address serious writing to my generation, and I began to consider the alternative of trying to reach young readers not yet hardened or grown insensitive to man's inhumanity to man, as it is called" (xxiv).

In a 1970 interview with Margaret Perry, Bontemps claimed that he started writing children's literature because, when he was coming of age, he couldn't find images of black people) in his junior and senior high school reading experiences. Bontemps repeated this theme when he answered a question about his turn to writing children's books in a 1972 interview with John O'Brien:

I was in no mood merely to write entertaining novels. The fact that Gone With the Wind was so popular at the time was a dramatic truth to me of what the country was willing to read. And I felt that black children had nothing with which they could identify. (13)

Carolyn Taylor provides another dimension to Bontemps's decision to write for children: "... he wanted young black people to be provided with carefully researched and documented facts about the richness of their historical past in Africa and America. He believed that only through knowledge of this complicated past could black youngsters direct and understand their identities and chart their own personal growth" (14). Kirkland Jones's biography of Bontemps, Renaissance Man from Louisiana, adds a slight variation before echoing Taylor: "He hoped to add a few stories that would help counteract the unpleasant traditions and associations of such stories as Little Black Sambo and Epaminandos. He was convinced that he had something better to offer America's children ..." (83).

Finally, Bontemps revealed, albeit indirectly, another variation on these themes of his motivation for writing literature for African American children in his 1969 essay "The Slave Narrative: An American Genre," printed as an introduction to his selected Great Slave Narratives. These comments reflect Bontemps's unusual scholastic history of being one of a very few African Americans educated in the predominantly white, religiously conservative, Seventh-Day Adventist San Fernando Academy. Paradoxically, the comments also reflect both a powerful and deeply felt sense of injustice and an equally heartfelt nostalgic longing coalescing around his plans in the 1960s to write his autobiography (titled A Man's Name), but left unfinished at his death:

When I was growing up, my teachers, as well as others unaware of what they were doing, gave me to understand that the only meaningful history of the Negro in the United States (possibly even in the world) began with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. In the half[-]century since my school days, I have had a chance to observe the tenacity of this assumption. As evidence to the contrary is disclosed, I begin to suspect that the colossal omissions they perpetuated were more than inadvertent. They were deliberate. Many may have been vindictive. (vii)

No wonder Bontemps wrote novels for adults about slave rebellions (Black Thunder and Drums at Dusk), as well as nonfiction history like The Story of the Negro and One Hundred Years of Negro Freedom. No wonder he wrote Chariot in the Sky and edited Golden Slippers and Hold Fast to Dreams (poetry anthologies for young people). No wonder he wrote about Bubber, the lonesome boy; Slumber, the sad-faced boy; and several other young African American males in their callow youth or in their adolescent curiosity learning about life as African Americans, learning of both their heritage and their status in a predominantly white society. Earlier, he had publicly bemoaned the lack of diversity in his scholastic reading assignments and the effect on him as a minority student when he accepted the Jane Addams Award in 1956 (for the enlarged 1955 edition of The Story of the Negro): "These things I would like to have known as a school boy and as a college student in the integrated schools of California are also things I wish my classmates had learned on the same days when we were given the small fragments of generally uncomplimentary information about Negro Americans that was found in the texts and references then in use" (1). In other words, we see Bontemps, over and over again, addressing the lack of stories, nonfiction and fiction, about African Americans. We also see Bontemps's recognition that all students suffer when schools socialize students in a monocultural context. He set about remedying that no-longer-acceptable situation through his own literary production.

In her 1990 essay on Bontemps's children's literature published in The Lion and The Unicorn, Violet J. Harris asserted that his work in this field is oppositional. That is, its "author, consciously or unconsciously, creates a text that contradicts traditional portrayals of an ethnic, religious, linguistic, or gender group" (110). Harris credits Bontemps with "forging an oppositional tradition in children's literature," in part by creating "authentic images" (111), and she contends that Bontemps "is omitted from current editions of children's literature texts" and that his children's literature has not received the critical attention it deserves, even though he "almost single-handedly created a 'canon' of children's literature that focused, primarily, on the African-American experience" (110). As Harris also asserts, in spite of these oversights, some of Bontemps's books remain in print, and others have been reissued (110), most notably Lonesome Boy, which was reissued in both 1967 and 1988 but is currently out of print. (Oxford University Press recently republished Bontemps's and Hughes's Popo and Fifina: Children of Haiti in 1993, which helps to support Harris's contention.)

Although Bontemps publicly stated his political (that is, social and racial) motives for writing, especially for writing children's literature, the economic aspect remains submerged in his unpublished letters and papers. The most concise of his declarations that children's books were more economically feasible to produce than adult books occurs in a letter to John B. Turner (formerly John J. Trounstine), Bontemps's literary agent in the late 1930s and the 1940s. In a letter dated April 9, 1945, he takes pleasure in the fact that he is still receiving royalties from his 1934 juvenile You Can't Pet a Possum: "Juveniles are wonderful. Every new one sells better than the rest, and all stay in print and keep moving. Would that the same could be said for novels." Unfortunately, some of the books stayed in print as long as they did because Bontemps agreed to reduced royalties as a condition of their longevity. A 1949 letter he wrote to Thayer Hobson of Morrow publishers illustrates this kind of agreement: "Of course I want to see YOU CAN'T PET A POSSUM stay in print, and I'll agree to a limited royalty cut if that's the only possible way." At the same time, he tried to keep the percentage as high as possible, as his last paragraph indicates: "But I do not admire 9 [percent] as a figure 10 is prettier."

As a writer, Bontemps constantly juggled many projects at the same time, often falling far behind projected deadlines. With its talk of being "hounded" and "threatened" by editors (Nichols 319), the letter to Hughes about Lonesome Boy quoted at the beginning of this essay alerts us to the pressures to complete work Bontemps often felt. In part, his production imperative stemmed from a relentless sense of providing an income for his family of eight (by 1945): himself, his six children, and Alberta, his wife. Not only did he have the writing projects, but also he tried - largely successfully - to keep a full-time job as either a teacher or a librarian, with interim work on the Illinois Writers' Project, a Work Projects Administration initiative to employ writers during the Depression years. He taught for three Seventh-Day Adventist schools early in his career: Harlem Academy in the 1920s, Oakwood Junior College (Huntsville, Alabama) in the early 1930s, and Shiloh Academy (Chicago) in the middle to late 1930s. The restrictive atmosphere - at both Oakwood and Shiloh, school officials suggested he burn his offending books, many by fellow Harlem Renaissance writers - finally forced him to cut off his association with the Church. According to Alex Bontemps, one of Arna's children, this action caused a rift in Arna Bontemps's relationship with his father, Paul Bismark Bontemps, who had become the top-ranking African American Adventist church official in California, but Arna held on as long as he did because he needed the income to support his family. Even when he found relative security in the library at Fisk University, where he worked for nearly thirty years, he still found it necessary to write for extra income, as well as to satisfy his creative drive.

Bontemps's family legacy (on both the paternal and maternal sides) embodied a strong work ethic and an even stronger sense of family responsibility, which leads us back to Lonesome Boy and its autobiographical elements. The relationship between the story's two main characters - Bubber, the prodigious boy trumpeter of the title, and his grandfather - resembles Bontemps's relationships with his father and, oddly, with his favorite family member, Joseph "Uncle Buddy" Ward, his maternal grandmother's brother. Paul Bismark Bontemps had himself been an itinerant trombone player in Claiborne Williams's jazz band, but he gave that up for a more stable job as a bricklayerstone mason after study at Straight University in New Orleans (Jones 1415). In the story, Bubber's grandfather admonishes him to watch how and where he plays his trumpet to avoid trouble. However, Bubber is so lonesome that blowing his trumpet hard, loud, and fast relieves his lonesomeness, even though it also causes him to be careless about his surroundings. He disregards his grandfather's warnings, goes to New Orleans, becomes a famous musician, and, finally, summoned by the devil himself, plays at the devil's ball, not realizing what has happened until he finds himself playing his trumpet in a pecan tree. Sheepishly, he returns to his grandfather's home and is welcomed with what we now call comfort food and an understanding grandfather who also played at a devil's ball when he was young. The authority figure of the grandfather resembles Paul Bontemps, who became an Adventist minister in California. But he also resembles Joseph Ward, an alcoholic labeled by Paul Bontemps as "don't care folks" (qtd. in Jones 39), in his knowledge of the folk tradition. That Bontemps combined elements of these significant figures in his life suggests he yearned for a parental figure with a mixture of seriousness and carelessness about life.

One could argue, in fact, that the story signifies Arna Bontemps's early career, with its rapid rise in Harlem during the Renaissance, as an equivalent to Bubber's New Orleans success. Bontemps's sojourn in Alabama could be signified by the devil's ball in the story, and Bubber's return home could signify Arna Bontemps's return to his father's home in California to finish writing Black Thunder, away from the scornful gaze of the Oakwood elders. As Charles James points out, however, the roles could be taken back a generation, with Bubber signifying Paul Bismark Bontemps as a youthful musician who learned the major lesson of the book (115n): "When you're lonesome, that's the time to go out and find somebody to talk to" (Bontemps, Lonesome 28). The elder Bontemps "was born in 1872 near Marksville[, the locale of Bubber's grandfather's house in the story,] at a small site known as Barbin's Landing" (James 115). In the story, Bubber catches a river boat headed toward New Orleans at Barbin's Landing, and he is known in New Orleans as the boy from Marksville. At least the caller who summons him to play at the devil's ball identifies him as "the boy from Marksville, the one who plays the trumpet" (Lonesome 13).

Other evidence that the story has autobiographical elements includes Bontemps's comments in letters to his editors that the dedication should read "To Constance" (his youngest daughter) and that the location should be Louisiana, with the use of Robert Flaherty's documentary Louisiana Story as a good source for exterior illustrations. Kirkland Jones maintains that the story's autobiographical base lies in

an episode the author during his boyhood heard a preacher tell in church. It was a narrative about a young man who liked jazz. He awoke one morning to find himself up high in an apple tree and announced he had been celebrating the devil's ball.... Actually, the book is about Bontemps's own conception of "waltziness": a person hearing faraway music within himself is so pleased with it, so engrossed in seeking self-satisfaction, that the end result is negative.

Jones deduces a substantial concept about Bontemps's philosophy from this story: "Hedonistic self-gratification" isolates a person "within his own heart," creating a kind of self-violation and "shutting out all the rest of experience" (132).

In addition to his declaration that the lonesome boy theme fits his own experiences, Bontemps seemed to treat this story differently from most of his other work. For example, its singular status as a story Bontemps published twice during his life (as Lonesome Boy, separately, 1955, and in The Book of Negro Folklore, edited by Bontemps and Hughes, 1958) and once posthumously in the collection of stories titled The Old South: "A Summer Tragedy" and Other Stories of the Thirties (as "Lonesome Boy, Silver Trumpet") suggests his affinity for it. The other two stories - both published in the 1930s and in The Old South - "A Summer Tragedy" and "Saturday Night" (published with two different subtitles), do not quite rival Bontemps's publication frequency of Lonesome Boy and do not involve parent-child relationships. (Neither space nor affinity allows a discussion of either "A Summer Tragedy" or "Saturday Night" within the context of Bontemps's children's literature.) And apparently Bontemps identified himself as the "Sad- Faced Author," the title of another Horn Book magazine article about his children's literature published in 1939. Aside from the title, however, he did not strongly identify himself with the sad-faced type. Instead he traced the origin of his Sad-Faced Boy characters (Slumber, Rags, and Willie) to J.P. Morgan and two of his three cousins, real children in Alabama who sang for Bontemps and his family. After hearing stories about Harlem from Bontemps, they journeyed north to Harlem to enjoy moderate success as street musicians, only to return to their home relieved to be back after their urban adventure turned sour when Morgan had his new shoes stolen while wearing them (Bontemps, "Sad" 11-12). As Bontemps indicates near the end of this article, the story of J.P. Morgan and his cousins became, with the basics intact but with authorial embellishment, his 1937 children's book Sad-Faced Boy.

The three publications of the "Lonesome Boy" story differ, but not by much, mainly at the very end of the story (and in the titles, of course). In fact, the galley pages of the 1955 edition more closely resemble the version published in The Old South than they resemble the 1955 separate publication of the story. The Table of Contents galley page from The Old South contains this note written by Bontemps: "'Lonesome Boy' and 'Mr. Kelso's Lion,' both written originally as adult short stories, have been published as juveniles by Houghton Mifflin and J. B. Lippincott, respectively" (v). The differences speak to Bontemps's sense of adult as opposed to children's literature. The children's version has a longer reconciliation scene between Bubber and his grandfather, part of it repeating dialogue from the beginning of the story.

Trying to distinguish between adult and children's literature can prove difficult with this story since Bontemps himself commented about its ambiguity. Both the Houghton Mifflin editor and some reviewers also stated that it didn't seem to separate its audiences cleanly. In a letter dated December 9, 1952, Houghton Mifflin's Editor of Children's Books, Mary Silva Cosgrave, wrote to Bontemps, "Some of our readers feel that it is too old in theme for the young and too slight for the old.... I have been toying with the idea of a book for the 11-13 age group.... "Bontemps responded on December 12, 1952, in part by speculating about audience differentiation: "I have dared to think that, given a little luck, this might become the kind of story that certain adults might also pick up and chuckle over, especially repentant hep cats and be-boppers. Perhaps after an evening in a night club." A little over a year later, in a letter dated February 26, 1954, Bontemps expressed a similar sentiment about the manuscript to Cosgrave in a postscript, "Are you hoping, as I am, that LONESOME BOY will have some appeal for the adult audience that reads the juveniles of, say Thurber and E. B. White? Is there a way to point up this other dimension?"

Reviewers, too, initially noticed this apparent audience ambiguity. For example, Augusta Baker's Saturday Review comments describe a "most unusual story ... for the sensitive, perceptive child and adult" (40). Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Ellen Lewis Buell suggests that the story can be read as a cautionary tale against investing too much in a private world to the neglect of meaningful relationships with other people, a warning valid for both youth and adult. Violet Harris discusses the story using the archetypal quest as the governing motif, a motif found universally in literature written for all ages, while claiming it as "arguably his best for children" and declaring it an unacknowledged "classic in children's literature" (123).

Examining the five different variations on the ending reproduced in the Appendix shows that Bontemps worked closely with his editor at Houghton Mifflin to tailor the story to reach the early adolescent reading audience. Such an analysis might also help to support Harris's claim to classic status for Lonesome Boy. The variation published as an adult story and comprising Drafts A and B, as well as the 1973 published version (written earlier, ostensibly in the 1930s), leaves the most to the imagination and to the creative reading and interpretive skills of adults. It emphasizes reconciliation and a return home over morals or messages. The longer version published as the children's book elaborates but simplifies the ending and repeats some of Grandpa's admonitory dialogue from earlier in the story. The Galleys version adds only one sentence to the adult version: a sentence suggested by Bontemps in response to his editor's request to clarify the after-effects of Bubber's experience playing for the devil (or dreaming about it, at least). The addition of the line" 'A little bit of trumpet playing is all right, but too much is enough'" suggests Grandpa's willingness to encourage Bubber to continue to blow his trumpet - but only in moderation and awareness, not with abandonment. That seems fair enough, but the final published version goes much further in this direction. It takes Grandpa into the realm of morality, like a priest at confession - stern, but forgiving. It also reiterates the message, almost to a fault, at least for adult readers. The sentence" 'Raising a boy like you ain't easy' "fits this description.

Quoting at length from Bontemps's Houghton Mifflin editor provides a fitting end to this essay about the importance of the "Lonesome Boy" theme, as well as the story itself, in Bontemps's children's literature. Mary Silva Cosgrave's initial response of December 9, 1942 (eighteen days after her marriage), speaks for itself: "Thank you for introducing us to Bubber. We have all enjoyed the story tremendously. It has the wonderful free quality of 'pouring itself out' with a tremendous sweep and feeling. The writing is beautiful." Not only is it beautiful, but it signifies the range of ambition Bontemps set for himself to serve as a catalyst for and to produce authentic African American children's literature comprising real characters confronting real problems, with a healthy dollop of folklore thrown in as lagniappe, of course, to remind us of its author's Louisiana heritage and to point to its autobiographical possibilities.

Appendix

To try to understand Bontemps's (and Houghton Mifflin editors') use of the "Lonesome Boy" theme, compare the five versions of the ending in the Appendix as follows: Draft A (ts.), Draft B (ts.), and the printed text of "Lonesome Boy, Silver Trumpet" (1973); and the Galleys and printed version of Lonesome Boy (1955). (Strike-throughs in this text are strike-overs, using the lower-case letter x, in the Draft A ts.)

"Lonesome Boy, Silver Trumpet" (Draft A, ts.)

Bubber nodded again. "I ended up in a pecan tree," he told Grandpa.

"I tried to tell you, son Bubber, but you wouldn't listen to me."

"I'll listen to you from now on, Grandpa."

"Well, take your trumpet in the house and put it on the shelf while I get you something to eat," he said.

"All right, Grandpa," Bubber said. Grandpa laughed through his whiskers.

Bubber smiled too. He was hungry, and he had not tasted any of Grandpa's cooking for a long time.

"Lonesome Boy, Silver Trumpet" (Draft B, ts.)

Bubber nodded again. "I ended up in a pecan tree," he told Grandpa.

"I tried to tell you, Bubber, but you wouldn't listen to me."

"I'll listen to you from now on, Grandpa."

Grandpa laughed through his whiskers. "Well, take your trumpet in the house and put it on the shelf while I get you something to eat," he said.

Bubber smiled too. He was hungry, and he had not tasted any of Grandpa's cooking for a long time.

"Lonesome Boy, Silver Trumpet" (1973)

Bubber nodded again. "I ended up in a pecan tree," he told Grandpa.

"I tried to tell you, Bubber, but you wouldn't listen to me."

"I'll listen to you from now on, Grandpa."

Grandpa laughed through his whiskers. "Well, take your trumpet in the house and put it on the shelf while I get you something to eat," he said.

Bubber smiled too. He was hungry, and he had not tasted any of Grandpa's cooking for a long time.

Lonesome Boy, Silver Trumpet (1955 Galleys)

Bubber nodded again. "I ended up in a pecan tree," he told Grandpa.

"I tried to tell you, Bubber, but you wouldn't listen to me."

"I'll listen to you from now on, Grandpa."

Grandpa laughed through his whiskers. "Well, take your trumpet in the house and put it on the shelf while I get you something to eat," he said. "A little bit of trumpet playing is all right, but too much is enough."

Bubber smiled too. He was hungry, and he had not tasted any of Grandpa's cooking for a long time.

Lonesome Boy (1955)

Bubber nodded again. "How did you know about all that, Grandpa?"

"Didn't I tell you I used to blow music, sonny boy?" Grandpa closed his eyes a moment. When he opened them again, he shook his head slowly. "Any time a boy with a trumpet takes off for New Orleans without telling anybody goodbye - well, sooner or later, one way or another, he's apt to hear from strange people."

"I should have hung up the telephone," Bubber mumbled, feeling ashamed of himself.

Suddenly, Grandpa's voice grew stern. "You should have minded what I told you at the first. Blow your horn when you're a-mind to, but put it down when you're through. When you go traipsing through the woods, leave it on the shelf. When you feel lonesome, don't touch it. A horn can't do nothing for lonesomeness but make it hurt worse. When you're lonesome, that's the time to go out and find somebody to talk to. Come back to your trumpet when the house is full of company or when people's passing on the street. That's what I tried to tell you before."

"I'm going to mind you this time, Grandpa," Bubber promised. "I'm going to mind every word you say."

Grandpa laughed through his whiskers. "Well, take your trumpet in the house and put it on the shelf while I get you something to eat," he said. "Raising up a boy like you ain't easy. First you tell him when to pick up his horn, then you tell him when to put it down. Some things he just has to learn for himself, I reckon."

Bubber smiled too. He was hungry, and he had not tasted any of Grandpa's cooking for a long time.

Works Cited

Baker, Augusta. Rev. of Lonesome Boy. Saturday Review 19 Mar. 1955: 40.

Bontemps, Alex. Interview. Hanover, NH. 5, 9 Aug. 1994.

Bontemps, Arna W. "Introduction to the 1968 Edition." Black Thunder. Boston: Beacon, 1992. xxi-xxix.

-----. Letters to Mary Silva Cosgrave. 12 Dec. 1952, 8 Dec. 1953, 14 Dec. 1953, 29 Jan. 1954, 26 Feb. 1954. Arna W. Bontemps Collection, Syracuse U Library, Syracuse, NY.

-----. Letter to Thayer Hobson. 29 Mar. 1949. Arna W. Bontemps Collection. Syracuse U Library, Syracuse, NY.

-----. Letter to John B. Turner. 9 Apr. 1945. Arna W. Bontemps Collection, Syracuse U Library, Syracuse, NY.

-----. Lonesome Boy. Boston: Houghton, 1955.

-----. "Lonesome Boy, Silver Trumpet." Draft A ts.; Draft B ts.; Galleys. Arna W. Bontemps Collection, Syracuse U Library, Syracuse, NY.

-----. "Lonesome Boy, Silver Trumpet." The Old South: "A Summer Tragedy" and Other Stories of the Thirties. New York: Dodd, 1973.57-70.

-----. "The Lonesome Boy Theme." Horn Book 42 (1966): 672-80.

-----. "On Receiving the Jane Addams Book Award." Ts. of speech delivered 20 Nov. 1956. Arna W. Bontemps Collection, Syracuse U Library, Syracuse, NY.

-----. "Sad-Faced Author." Horn Book 15 (1939): 7-12.

-----. "The Slave Narrative: An American Genre." Great Slave Narratives. Ed. Bontemps. Boston: Beacon, 1969. vii-xix.

Buell, Ellen Lewis. "The Silver Trumpet." Rev. of Lonesome Boy. New York Times Book Review 1 May 1955: 28.

Cosgrave, Mary Silva. Letter to Arna W. Bontemps. 9 Dec. 1952. Arna W. Bontemps Collection, Syracuse U Library, Syracuse, NY.

Harris, Violet J. "From Little Black Sambo to Pope and Fifina: Arna Bontemps and the Creation of African-American Children's Literature." Lion and the Unicorn 14 (1990): 108-27.

James, Charles L. "Arna Bontemps's Creole Heritage." Syracuse University Library Courier 30 (1995): 91-115.

Jones, Kirkland C. Renaissance Man from Louisiana: A Biography of Arna Wendell Bontemps. Westport: Greenwood, 1992.

Nichols, Charles H., ed. Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters: 1925-1967. 1980. New York: Paragon, 1990.

O'Brien, John. "Arna Bontemps." Interviews with Black Authors. Ed. O'Brien. New York: Liveright, 1973. 2-11.

Perry, Margaret. Interview with Bontemps. 11 Dec. 1970. New Haven, CT. Tape in Arna W. Bontemps Collection, Syracuse U Library, Syracuse, NY.

Taylor, Carolyn. Discussion Guide. Profiles of Black Achievement: Arna Bontemps/Aaron Douglas. Sound Filmstrip. New York: Guidance Associates, 1973.

Joseph A. Alvarez teaches at Central Piedmont Community College and is writing the Twayne United States Author Series book on Arna W. Bontemps. He is the Executive Coordinator of the Mark Twain Circle of America and the Secretary-Treasurer of the American Humor Studies Association.