Phillip Noon

Ann was born in October 1908 in Connecticut as the youngest of three sisters. Her father was a pharmacist and her mother, a shop owner in the town of Old Saybrook where they lived. Ann and her sisters had a very disciplined upbringing which may have cultivated Ann’s later intellectual success.

Ann’s mother worked in a factory before she became a businesswoman, and her Aunts worked as maids. Despite her family’s working class heritage Ann and her sisters were largely sheltered. Ann and her sisters did however experience some of the social disadvantages of African Americans of this time. Ann wrote in her “My First Jim Crow Experience” that a racist man decided he did not want her on the same beach as him. Ann and her sisters had difficult experiences in school as well, such as having a teacher refuse to teach them.

 Ann was first inspired to write by her High School English teacher when her teacher stated that “I honestly believe you could be a writer if you wanted to.”  Despite this, her family encouraged her to become a Pharmacist, which she did for some time. She began writing short stories while working as a Pharmacist.  In 1938 she married George D. Petry of Lousiana and he brought her to New York. She wrote articles for local papers and short stories.  While living in New York she began to fully experience the social difficulties of living in the big city and being African American.  She dealt with these experiences by writing about them. Her most popular novel; The Street, was a reflection of this.

 Like a Winding Sheet was a story about a working class African American couple, but was from the perspective of the husband, Johnson.  Throughout the story Johnson deals with great frustration, fatigue, and helplessness.  Both Johnson and his wife, Mae work the night shift at different factories.  It becomes evident that Johnson has a harder time dealing with his abnormal schedule and the nature of the work he has to do than his wife. Mae seems to cope very well with their adverse situation.  Johnson experiences hardship at work by being insulted and mistreated by his Forewoman, Mrs. Scott.  He later experiences discrimination at local restaurant after completing his shift when the white waitress refuses to serve him a cup of coffee.  His angst and frustration climaxes after he gets home and his wife begins to nag on him for sitting on her work overalls. He finally cracks and explodes on her, proceeding to hit her in the face multiple times.

 Racial discrimination and insensitivity, plight of the working class, segregation, domestic violence.

 The excerpt from The Street was Chapter 1, The Apartment.  Lutie Johnson, the main character, is searching for an apartment in which to move into with her younger brother, Bub.  Lutie’s situation at home with her father, and his girlfriend is not good. She is seeking to rescue herself and her brother Bub from their terrible situation and make it on their own.  She seeks out a rundown, low-rent apartment for her and her brother. It seems she fears her situation at home so much that any place is better than there.

 She comes upon a place advertising a cheap 3-room apartment for rent.  While entering, she encounters a pleasant woman with “snake eyes” who kind of sets the mood for the rest of the chapter.  She meets the superintendant of the apartment who she instantly mistrusts but nevertheless, allows to show her the 3 room apartment.  During most of her experience in the rundown apartment she is wrought with fear over the superintendants true intentions. She eventually decides she is just fooling herself and agrees to rent the apartment because home is most certainly worse.

 Mistrust, sexual insecurity, poverty of Harlem, metaphorical representation of the situation of African Americans of the time.