In 1917, she graduated from Brookline High School and in 1918 enrolled in Radcliffe College, commuting to campus because many African-American students were denied dormitory accommodation.

Two years later, she took on a position at Armstrong High School in Washington, D.C., until 1930, during which time her mother and father both died suddenly.

Johnson's "S Street salon" was an important meeting place for many of the writers and artists involved in the New Negro Renaissance.

Bonner is one of the many frequently unrecognized black female writers of the Harlem Renaissance who resisted the universalizing, essentialist tendencies by focusing on atypical women rather than on an archetypal man, such as the New Negro," which can be seen in her earliest works.

[10] Bonner regularly discussed poverty, familial relations, urban living, colorism, feminism, and racism in her works.

[12] Bonner may have adopted this pseudonym as a reaction to the untimely death of her parents, namely her father, Joseph, who financially supported her schooling.

She argued against sexism and racism and advised other black women to remain silent in order to gain understanding, knowledge, and truth to fight the oppression of race and gender.

Several of Bonner's short stories addressed the barriers that African-American women faced when they attempted to follow the Harlem Renaissance's call for self-improvement through education and issues surrounding discrimination, religion, family, and poverty.

Although she was not often appreciated during her time and even today, perhaps one of Bonner's greatest contributions to the Harlem Renaissance was her emphasis on claiming not only a racial identity, but a gendered one as well.

[13] Bonner's works focused on the historical specificity of her time and place rather than the universality of an idealized African past.

[10] In "On Being Young -- A Woman -- And Colored", Bonner explores the necessarily layered identity of black womanhood, discussing the difficulties that come with belonging to two oppressed groups.