Give Us Each Day by Gloria T. Hull

A significant life, scrappily skimmed. Alice Dunbar-Nelson (I 875-1935) was the widow of black poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar (d. 1906), and a writer and activist in her own fight. Her Diary, however, is both fragmentary and cursory. It begins late in 192 l, when Dunbar-Nelson was living in Wilmington (Del.) and co-editing the Wilmington Advocate with journalist husband Robert (''Bobbo'') Nelson; then it breaks off without explanation, to resume in 1926 and continue through 193 I. Within these segments, too much is bare summary: e.g., ''Slept. Ate. Went to movies.'' This is a loss, for Dunbar-Nelson's activities ranged wide. She was present at a historic meeting with Harding at which prominent blacks presented a 50-thousand-signature petition requesting clemency for black soldiers arrested after a racial incident. (''He would look into the matter as soon as possible. We understood, of course, that other things might have to take precedence. . .'') She occasionally hobnobbed with luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance, whose names are listed in passing (''Reached Fifth Avenue restaurant 8:50. . . Scared to go in. . . Welcomed effusively by Jim [James Weldon Johnson], Countee Cullen, Carl Van Vechten''). Struggling for years to piece together a living from writing, teaching, and speaking, she is delighted when in 1928 her work for the American Friends Inter-Racial Peace Committee becomes a paid position, allowing her to leave her job at the Girls Industrial School: ''And so--adieu to the Barn and the Morons.'' By 1929 ill health limits Dunbar-Nelson's political activism; her thoughts take a sensual turn as she becomes sexually involved with two women, one a newspaperwoman (her ''little blue dream of loveliness''), the other an artist. Throughout, Dunbar-Nelson seems largely content to record events, saving her reflections and finer writing for the poems, articles, and essays that appeared in a range of publications. Given the interest of the source, a disappointment. ~ Kirkus Reviews