We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,545,518.29 | Books Available: 800,421 | Members Online: 265

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Frye Street & Environs: The Collected Works of Marita Bonner (Black women writers series)

Frye Street Environs The Collected Works of Marita Bonner - Black women writers series
Author: Marita Bonner

Marita Bonner (1899-1971), prize-winning author of short stories, plays, and essays, is virtually unknown today. Born and educated in Boston and Cambridge, a writer and member of Georgia Douglas Johnson's "S" Street Salon in Washington, D.C., and a teacher, wife, and mother in Chicago, Bonner is one of America's most vital twentieth-century blac... more »k writers.

Here for the first time in book form are her collected works. Bonner's stories, essays, and plays, many of which were originally published in the black magazines "Crisis" and "Opportunity" between 1925 and 1941, describe black working-class life in Chicago. The setting is Frye Street, Bonner's fictional neighborhood, a melting pot where many different ethnic groups struggle to survive in the face of extreme poverty, racism, and violence. Listen to how she evokes the atmosphere of the place in the story "Nothing New": "You have been down on Frye Street. You know how it runs... from freckled-faced tow heads to yellow Orientals; from broad Italy to broad Georgia, from hooked nose to square black noses. How it lisps in French, how it babbles in Italian, how it gurgles in German, how it drawls and crawls through the Black Belt dialects. Frye Street flows nicely together. It is like muddy water. Like muddy water in a brook."

"Frye Street and Environs" is a rich and rewarding collection. Opening with two essays, the most famous of which is the poignant autobiographical "One Being Young--a Woman--and Colored," the book also contains three plays and 22 short stories. "The Purple Flower," an experimental dramatic allegory about the back quest for freedom and happiness in the post-Emancipation U.S., is probably the best know of her plays. Her short stories--works like "The Prison-Bound," "Drab Rambles," "Tin Can," "The Makin's," and "Hate Is Nothing"--offer an extraordinary glimpse into the lives of working-class blacks, exploring the interlocking themes of color prejudice, alienation of the Southern black migrant, ethnic clashes, tensions in interracial romance, the psychological devastation of racism, poverty, thwarted ambition, and the problems of black female aspiration.

"There is only one Frye Street," wrote Marita Bonner, but "all the world is there." Until now, Bonner's fictional universe has been known to only a select few. With the publication of "Frye Street and Environs," her audience will grow as many readers encounter for the first time the thoughts and passions of the people in this unforgettable neighborhood.

ISBN-13: 9780807063002
ISBN-10: 0807063002
Publication Date: 1987
Pages: 286
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Beacon Press
Book Type: Unknown Binding
Members Wishing: 1
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Literature & Fiction >> World Literature

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Frye Street & Environs: The Collected Works of Marita Bonner (Black women writers series)

Loading...