Ann Petry

Writer

• Born: October 12, 1908
• Birthplace: Old Saybrook, Connecticut
• Died: April 28, 1997
• Place of death: Old Saybrook, Connecticut

The first female African American writer to sell more than one million copies of a novel, Petry devoted her life to literature and social causes. Her books were concerned with the effects of prejudice on people’s ability to lead fulfilling lives.

Early Life

Ann Lane Petry (PEH-tree) was born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, on October 12, 1908. Her father, Peter Clark Lane, was the first African American granted a pharmacy license in Connecticut. Her mother, Bertha James Lane, was a licensed podiatrist and successful businesswoman. Although they lived in a small, predominantly white town, the Lanes owned the town’s only drugstore. Petry rarely faced racial discrimination in Connecticut, but when she did, the experiences had a major impact on her. Once, the family was forced off of a public beach by white swimmers. Another time, a high school English teacher forced her to read aloud the part of an illiterate slave. These and other experiences outraged Petry, and she never forgot how it felt to be treated with prejudice and ignorance.

Petry also never forgot how embarrassed she was when her father enrolled her in Hampton Normal and Agricultural School to train as a housekeeper, thinking she would never amount to anything. She refused to remain at Hampton Normal and left to attend the Connecticut College of Pharmacy. After graduating, she worked in her family’s drugstore. While working there, Petry began writing short stories, using customers as her inspiration.

In 1936, Petry secretly married George David Petry, a writer from New Iberia, Louisiana, and they lived together on and off in New York City from 1936 without her family’s knowledge. Tired of lying, the Petrys remarried in Connecticut in 1938, never revealing the fact of the first wedding.

Life’s Work

Petry and her husband moved to New York in 1938, and she started working at The Amsterdam News, an African American newspaper, selling advertising space. She also acted with the American Negro Theater and took creative writing classes at Columbia University. While living in Harlem, Petry began her lifelong commitment to activism. In 1941, Petry began writing a weekly column about social issues in Harlem for Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.’s The People’s Voice. That same year, she founded Negro Women, Inc., a watchdog organization that challenged racially biased laws. In 1944, she worked at the New York Foundation studying the effects of segregation on ghetto children. She also worked at the first after-school center for latchkey kids in Harlem.

Petry got her first literary break in 1939, when the Baltimore Afro-American published her story “Marie of the Cabin,” a romantic mystery. The story’s success encouraged Petry to quit journalism and dedicate herself to writing fiction. Her successes continued with the publication of more stories, including “On Saturday the Siren Sounds at Noon” (1943) and “Like a Winding Sheet” (1946), published in The Crisis, the journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). “Like a Winding Sheet” was included in Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Short Stories of 1946.

In 1945, a Houghton Mifflin editor persuaded Petry to apply for the company’s Literary Fellowship. She submitted the beginning chapters of a novel and won twenty-four hundred dollars and guaranteed publication of the finished manuscript. In 1946, The Street was published to great acclaim and popular success. It was a gritty, realistic look at life in Harlem for a single mother and her son. The book tells the story of Lutie Johnson and her tragic struggles to overcome racism, sexism, and lack of opportunity. It sold out its initial twenty-thousand-copy run and went on to sell more than 1.5 million copies, making Petry the first million-selling female African American writer.

The novel’s enormous success made Petry a celebrity, which she abhorred, and she and George moved back to Old Saybrook to avoid the limelight. She published two more novels, Country Place (1947) and The Narrows (1953). While both received critical praise, neither was as popular as The Street.

In 1949, Petry gave birth to her daughter, Elizabeth, and began writing children’s stories: The Drugstore Cat(1949), Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad (1955), and Tituba of Salem Village (1963). In 1971, Petry’s Miss Muriel and Other Short Stories was published in the United States. Petry remained in Old Saybrook, often traveling to receive awards, give lectures, and teach, until her death on April 28, 1997.

Significance

Petry embraced naturalism and social realism in her novels, showcasing the negative effects of racism, sexism, and societal expectations on people with no options. Always concerned with how one’s spirit could be destroyed by lack of opportunity and understanding, she paved the way for African American women writers by proving that their books could be commercially successful.

Bibliography

Davis, Arthur Paul, ed. From the Dark Tower: Afro-American Writers 1900-1960. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974. Analysis of African American writers in the first half of the twentieth century. Petry and her contemporaries are discussed, as is the Harlem Renaissance.

Lubin, Alex, ed. Revising the Blueprint: Ann Petry and the Literary Left. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. Although Petry is usually omitted from the list of important leftist writers, this book attempts to link her with leftist movements in the 1930’s-1960’s through an analysis of her essays and literary work.

Petry, Elizabeth. At Home Inside: A Daughter’s Tribute to Ann Petry. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008. In this biography, Petry’s daughter tries to correct inaccuracies and reveal some of her mother’s secretive life. Drawing on letters, family reminiscences, and a little detective work, Petry presents an affectionate look at her mother’s extraordinary life.