Content provided in partnership with

Ann Lane Petry - tribute

Black Issues Book Review, July-August, 2002 by Clarence V. Reynolds

<< Page 1 Continued from page 1. Previous | Next

Eventually, Petry decided to devote herself to writing fiction, and she left her job, vowing to "spend every single minute of my day just writing." She held steadfast to her promise, and in 1943 her short story "On Saturday the Siren Sounds at Noon," was published in The Crisis.

In the story, Petry's main character recalls the deaths of his children, triggered by the weekly, noontime air-raid sirens. Two years later, Petry wrote what is perhaps her best-known short story, "Like a Winding Sheet" which was also published in The Crisis.

More Articles of Interest: Rethinking realism in Ann Petry's The Street - Critical Essay; White family values in Ann Petry's Country Place; Creative prejudice in Ann Petry's 'Miss Muriel.'; Literature as engagement: teaching African American literature to Korean...; Buried alive: gothic homelessness, black women's sexuality, and death in Ann...

Her story of a man who is confronted throughout his day with racial bias garnered Petry national acclaim. "Like a Winding Sheet" was later reprinted in The Best Short Stories of 1946. The story also caught the attention of the editors at Houghton Mifflin. Petry, who happened to have been working on a novel at the time, submitted an outline and five chapters to the publishers. The editors then encouraged her to apply for a writer's scholarship and as fortune would have it, Petry received the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award--a $2400 grant and a book contract. The result was her monumental novel The Street.

Not only was The Street a phenomenal best-seller, the story was perhaps one of the earliest works to chronicle the black urban experience, specifically the plight of a woman trying to find acceptance and self-worth.

Set in Harlem in 1940, The Street tells the tragic story of a single mother, Lutie Johnson, and her eight-year-old son struggling to survive. Lutie is an attractive, intelligent and resourceful young woman who is forced to work long hours as a maid. As she strives to maintain her dignity amidst the challenges she faces, Lutie also worries about her son, Bub, and the dangers of the streets that lurk outside their doorstep.

In the novel, Petty confronts the notion of black women being viewed as sexual objects, as spectacle. In the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, one critic noted that until the publication of The Street no one "had made a thesis of the debilitating mores of economic, racial and sexual violence let loose against black women in their new urban ghetto environment."

In American Visions Ray Rickman wrote, "The Street was a story, not propaganda, and it was a truer, more intelligent depiction of Harlem than most previous writers were able to accomplish."

Though none of the books that followed earned the wide acclaim as her first, Petry's next novels are regarded as having literary merit. Again drawing from her surroundings, Petry examined the difficulties of intimate, interracial relationships in her stories. In Country Place (1947), the author focuses on class and gender in a small New England town, where the major characters are white and the minor ones vary in ethnic backgrounds and nationalities. With The Narrows (1953), Petry weaves a tale of a love affair between a black college-educated man and wealthy white woman. The theme was quite provocative for the time. In "Miss Muriel" from Miss Muriel and Other Stories (1971), the first collection of stories to be published by a black woman in the United States, the lead character is a precocious 12-year-old girl who describes her aunt's suitors: one black and the other white.

Ann Lane Petry - tribute

Black Issues Book Review, July-August, 2002 by Clarence V. Reynolds

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Health

Most Popular Articles in Arts

Most Popular Publications in Arts