Frye Street & Environs: The Collected Works of Marita Bonner

Marita Bonner wrote her Frye Street Stories between 1925 and 1941. They represent a black woman's response to the continuing changes of urbanism and industrialism, and to the continuing facts of racism, sexism, classism, and colorism. She is especially adept at representing the myriad ways in which these things affected blacks of the period, particularly in the domestic sphere. Even though Bonner's stories are marked by an unevenness in quality, they are certainly worth reading for the way they in which they capture a black woman's intellectual response to the world around her in the time period between the Harlem Renaissance and black women's renaissance, which came later in the forties. For me, the standouts are the later stories: PATCH QUILT, ONE TRUE LOVE, ON THE ALTAR, HIGH-STEPPER, STONES FOR BREAD, REAP IT AS YOU SOW IT, and LIGHT IN DARK PLACES.