A Tribute to Dorothy Bryant

Dorothy Bryant (1930–2017) was a brilliant writer whose work deserves much more attention. She excelled both as a novelist and a playwright. My favorites of her works are the prophetic fantasy novel, The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You; her work of historical fiction, Confessions of Madame Psyche; and the play Dear Master. Dorothy’s complete works span twelve novels, seven plays, and two books of nonfiction. She explored an amazing array of genres, including historical fiction and drama, fantasy, mystery, criticism, and realistic novels set in the present day. 

Dorothy Bryant

I met Dorothy in 1994 when I was working on the first English translation of a Horace, a novel by George Sand. I was trying to find a voice in English that was the equivalent of Sand’s sculpted French prose. Dorothy had written the deeply moving play Dear Master, based on the correspondence between George Sand and Gustave Flaubert, where she created authentic dialogues in English for those writers. I sought out Dorothy’s guidance and support. She was an incredibly kind and encouraging mentor, and a spellbinding and witty storyteller in conversation. 

She was born Dorothy Mae Calvetti to an Italian-American immigrant family in San Francisco’s Mission District. Dorothy grew up in a working-class household where her father ran a small gas station and her mother was a homemaker and office worker.

Dorothy (left) with sister Rose

She attended Mission High School, where she felt she did not have the most rigorous education. She longed to enroll at the University of California, Berkeley, the leading public university on the West Coast. But Dorothy’s older sister Rose had gone there and did not finish a degree, and their parents did not want to risk a repeat. They told Dorothy they would only pay for her to attend San Francisco State College (now University). Dorothy, who loved piano, applied there and majored in music, graduating in 1950. She particularly enjoyed playing the compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach. I wonder if Dorothy’s skill in creating dialogue was shaped by the Bach of the Two-Part Inventions.

After graduating from college, Dorothy began teaching at the age of 23. She and her first husband, Lou Ungaretti, already had a son and daughter. In the late 1950s, Dorothy taught Music and English in San Francisco at Lick-Wilmerding High School, which then only admitted boys. Dorothy also led the glee club there and wrote the music and lyrics for the school plays.

Dorothy Bryant teaching at Lick-Wilmerding High School, 1950s

She went back to San Francisco State College and earned a Master’s degree in Creative Writing in 1964. Dorothy then taught at Contra Costa Community College for many years, and created that campus’ first Black history course. Dorothy was a beloved instructor. She wrote in her novel Anita, Anita, “… nothing is so intoxicating as teaching. It is the closest thing to loving… ”

Dorothy began her literary career with the novel Ella Price’s Journal, published in 1972 by a major press, Lippincott. That book was way ahead of its time in taking seriously the struggles of married women who worked in the home.

 

By virtue of that success, Dorothy was able to get a literary agent, who then read the manuscript of her second novel, The Comforter, later retitled The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You. But the agent flatly refused to represent her book. He told Dorothy, “I don’t want to show this to anybody because I don’t want to prejudice publishers against you.” Because of his negative reaction, Dorothy gave up on sending the book to editors. On the recommendation of her second husband, Bob Bryant, she decided to self-publish it, calling her publishing company Ata Books, after the fantasy world in the novel. The book sold out its first run within two years, and Random House approached Dorothy to reprint it. Their one caveat was that they wanted to change the title to The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You, a phrase from the book, and Dorothy agreed.

Dorothy Bryant with son John and husband Bob Bryant

A pioneering work of the fantasy genre, The Kin of Ata depicts a world where happiness is measured not by material success or status, but by how harmonious a person’s dreams are. This farseeing book has become a classic and has remained in print for 50 years. It remains Dorothy’s best-known work.

Following that difficult experience with the agent, Dorothy elected to self-publish almost all her subsequent books. They span an incredible range of settings, subjects, and genres, from the epistolary novel Prisoners; to her mystery Killing Wonder; to Confessions of Madame Psyche, an exploration of the craze for seances that a hard-luck young woman exploits in the San Francisco of the era of the great earthquake of 1906, which won the 1987 American Book Award. To replace the role of editor, Dorothy relied on friends such as Anne Fox to critique her self-published manuscripts.

 

Dorothy began writing for the stage with her play Dear Master. The original 1991 production featured the stellar cast of Barbara Oliver as George Sand, and Ken Grantham as Gustave Flaubert. The play was so well received that it launched Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre, named for George Sand’s actual given name, Aurore. Dorothy’s husband Bob Bryant, a contractor, built the seating and stage for the theater in Berkeley’s historic City Club, designed by architect Julia Morgan.

Barbara Oliver as George Sand and Ken Grantham as Gustave Flaubert
in Dorothy Bryant’s Dear Master

Someone recently asked me who were some of my favorite playwrights, and I named Tom Stoppard, Jez Butterworth, and Dorothy Bryant. I included Dorothy primarily on the basis of Dear Master, because in that play she takes the static material of a written correspondence between two writers and turns it into the most moving and memorable drama about a literary friendship that explores deep questions about life.

Dorothy’s other plays also focused on historical topics, including The Trial of Cornelia Connelly. The plot revolves around the stranger-than-fiction case of a woman in the 1840s whose husband deposits her in a nunnery so he can become a priest. When the husband changes his mind a year later and tries to reclaim his wife, she refuses. The husband then goes to court to force his wife to return.

 

As with all of Dorothy’s historical fiction and dramas, she meticulously researched The Trial of Cornelia Connelly. She often traveled to verify sites and events in her works. For her historical romance novel Anita, Anita, based on the life of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s wife, Dorothy retraced the couple’s epic journey from Brazil to Uruguay to Italy. Neither of those projects brought Dorothy wealth or fame, but I greatly admire that she followed her literary passions and interests, regardless of whether they led to popular successes.

 

Dorothy Bryant was also no stranger to controversy in her literary career. Before feminism became fashionable, Dorothy was outspoken in her depiction of the challenges of women. She also created sympathetic working-class characters of a kind rarely seen in post-World War II U.S. fiction. Her nonfiction includes Writing a Novel, a book on the writing process; and Literary Lynching, a survey of unofficial censorship by groups of readers

 

Dorothy was hardly one to toe the party line. She was just as tough on hypocrisy on the left as she was on elitism on the right. In that sense, Dorothy Bryant reminds me a great deal of George Orwell. She was not afraid to call it as she saw it, no matter who might take offense. Dorothy Bryant’s willingness to disregard accepted dogmas and to aim always for the complex truth is much needed in our current intellectual landscape.

 

Many thanks to Dorothy Bryant’s daughter Lorri Ungaretti for providing much of the information in this blog.

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Zack’s new book of poetry, The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens and Other Poems on Aging. Order in the USA    Order in the UK

Zack’s most recent translation: The Water Drinkers and Other Sketches of Paris in the Romantic Era by Henry Murger

Other posts of interest:

How to Get Published

Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop

How Not to Become a Literary Dropout

Putting Together a Book Manuscript

Working with a Writing Mentor

How to Deliver Your Message

Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?

Why Write Poetry?

Poetic Forms: Introduction, the Sonnet, the Sestina, the Ghazal, the Tanka, the Villanelle

Praise and Lament

How to Be an American Writer

Writers and Collaboration

Types of Closure in Poetry