Arna Bontemps and Ernest Gaines Continued

Arna Bontemps African American Museum

Last Thursday, I wrote about Arna Bontemps' "Why I Returned (A Personal Essay)." How do Bontemps' experiences compare with those of Gaines as a young man. In many ways, they are similar. Gaines left Louisiana at the age of fifteen in 1948. Like Bontemps, Gaines migrated to California; however, unlike Bontemps, Gaines remained in California, settling eventually in San Francisco. It took Gaines a long time to even think about returning to the South or Louisiana. Eventually, he began returning to Louisiana in the early 1960s after James Meredith integrated the University of Mississippi. Unlike Bontemps, Gaines does not talk about the tensions between "folk heritage" and whether or that heritage should be presented in his works. Instead, in interviews, he talks about the conditions in the South, as Bontemps does as well.

Bontemps' father chose to move the family to California after an incident with  men one Saturday evening. Coming home with his pay and presents for his wife. Bontemps' father encountered two drunk white men. One of them, with slurred speech, muttered, "Let's walk over the big nigger" (5). His muscles tensing up, Bontemps' father began calculating all of the possible outcomes of the encounter. Even though he knew the two men didn't pose a threat to him, a number of questions raced through his mind: "Was something brewing? Racial tension again? . . . But was this the time for a showdown? Assuming he could handle the two-on-one, what then?" (5) If he assaulted the men, he would be chased down and become the victim of mob vengeance, regardless of the provocation" (5). After calmly stepping aside, Bontemps' father made his way home. On his walk home, he came to the decision that would change his family's lives forever.

Bontemps' father decided to move his family to California, eventually settling on San Francisco as their home. Bontemps does not mention any personal racial confrontations between himself and whites while he lived in Louisiana, partly because he was only three when he left. Instead, he talks about spending time with his grandmother in the back yard. Upon settling in California, he starts to pick up on the conversations his father has with his mother, grandmother, and others. He says, "I began to pick up comment about the place we had left, comment which had been withheld from young ears while we were still in Louisiana" (6). As he grew, Bontemps picked up in their conversation, and in some ways, I picture him sitting around the house on a Sunday afternoon much like the narrator in Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" who fell asleep listening to his parents and others talk about the South and things that he did not comprehend yet.

Like Bontemps, Gaines moved to California at an early age. Even though he was about ten years older than Bontemps was when he left Louisiana, Gaines does not, very often if at all, mention experiences with racism that he encountered before leaving Louisiana. Just as Bontemps recalls walking with his grandmother in the back yard and picking pecans, Gaines talks about sitting on the porch listening to the older people and writing letters for them. In many ways, Bontemps' and Gaines' decision to focus on the community they grew up in instead of the society that would oppress them says a lot. The community, whether that be familial or literal community, provided each with a form of protection, shielding them from the racism outside. Gaines draws on this in Bloodline where the first story, "A Long Day in November," is told from a six-year-old boy's point of view. The boy experiences life in the quarters, surrounded by those who love him and have his best interests in mind. The second story, "The Sky is Gray," sees the encroachment of the outside world on the community when James and Octavia go to Bayonne.

There is more that could be said here. Perhaps I will have one more post on Bontemps and Gaines. Specifically, I want to think about Bontemps' "A Summer Tragedy" and Gaines' The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. What other authors have similar narratives to those of Bontemps and Gaines, leaving the South and either returning or not? Let me know in the comments below.

Bontemps, Arna. The Old South: "A Summer Tragedy" and Other Stories of the Thirties. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1973. Print.