By Nava Atlas | On April 25, 2015 | Updated September 29, 2025 | Comments (0)
Country Place by Ann Petry (1947) came on the heels of the massive success of her first novel, The Street, published just the year before. The Street was groundbreaking, becoming the first novel by an African-American woman to sell more than a million copies. It would eventually sell more than a million and a half, and was reissued in a new edition in 1992.
Born Ann Lane (1908 – 1997), she was was raised in Old Saybrook, Connecticut and was shielded from the very worse effects of racism in early 20th-century America. In 1938, she married George Petry, and the couple moved to Harlem. There she began a writing career in earnest, working as a journalist, columnist, and editor. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On April 24, 2015 | Updated May 4, 2026 | Comments (1)
The Street by Ann Petry (1946) was the first novel by a Black woman writer to sell more than a million copies — all told, it sold more than 1.5 million. The story centers on Lutie Johnson, a young Black single mother coping with racism, sexual harassment, violence, and class divisions in World War II-era New York City.
Ann Petry was raised in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, and grew up as part of a middle-class Black family. Her father, a pharmacist, and her mother, a podiatrist, provided a relatively sheltered life for Ann and her siblings.
Ann followed in her father’s footsteps and became a pharmacist, but writing was her true ambition. She was an admirer of Jo March, the budding author and main character in Louisa May Alcott‘s Little Women. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On April 24, 2015 | Updated October 22, 2025 | Comments (0)
The Narrows by Ann Petry (1953) was the third and last full-length novel for adult readers by the groundbreaking author of the 1946 blockbuster, The Street.
Though Petry would never replicate the incredible success of The Street, which became the first novel by an African-American woman to sell more than a million copies, The Narrows is a solid entry into the canon of an American author whose talent deserves to be more widely recognized. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On April 20, 2015 | Updated September 21, 2022 | Comments (0)
A brief description of the The Other One, from the 1931 edition, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy: The Other One by Colette is a bravura performance which perhaps she alone among writers could have carried off with such perfect tact.
It has for its essential theme the acceptance by a wife of another woman in the home, not so much as a rival, but rather as an ally who “seconds” her in the difficult task of keeping her roving and egocentric husband within bounds.
Although it is true that the other woman succumbs to the husband’s seduction, this is no study in polygamy, but a poignant, brilliantly analyzed story of two women with much in common and a determination not to become antagonists. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On April 17, 2015 | Updated August 7, 2026 | Comments (0)
From the original review of Mother Carey’s Chickens by Kate Douglas Wiggin in the New York Times, September, 1911: Here is a tale of motherhood and childhood which will come close to the hearts of the multitudinous “common people” who are the salt and salvation of the American nation.
It is Mother Carey’s Chickens by Kate Douglas Wiggin. There is not a lord nor a villain in the story, nor a millionaire, nor a beggar. There is no study of society, nor any intrigues nor immorality. Read More→
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