The Street

“She noticed that once the crowd walked the length of the platform and started up the stairs toward the street [in Harlem], it expanded in size. The same people who had made themselves small on the train, even on the platform, suddenly grew so large they could hardly get up the stairs to the street together. She reached the street at the very end of the crowd and stood watching them as they scattered in all directions, laughing and talking to each other” (57).

Harlem Newsboy; Parks/Library of Congress via pingnews.

The Street

Published in 1946, The Street is a strangely under-discussed classic: it was never taught in my high school or college classes, I never remember seeing it on book lists or displays…the fact is, I’d never even heard of it until last year, when I picked it up, read the back cover, and promptly put it on a book display myself (I can happily report that it was checked out later that same day). What makes this exclusion (especially from school reading lists) so surprising is that the book, while literary, beautifully crafted and shining with the patina of having been published more than 50 years ago, is infinitely more readable and easy to identify with than, say, The Grapes of Wrath or The Old Man and the Sea. The story of Lutie Johnson, a young, black, single mother struggling to live and thrive in Harlem, The Street is resonant with themes of dreams, ambition, and the seemingly insurmountable barriers to achieving ones dreams mounted by racism, classism, and sexism.

While The Street’s exclusion from classrooms and reading lists is surely a result of precisely the racism and sexism that Lutie herself is forced to navigate (what brought the novel to my attention again recently was hearing scholar Jean-Christophe Cloutier describe how Petry had donated her manuscript to Yale University Library—striking in that few black authors of the time grew famous enough in their lifetime for their manuscripts to be desirable by white institutions like Yale. Alas, the manuscript was lost in the archives and only recently rediscovered. I haven’t been able to confirm this anecdote online, but have emailed Mr. Cloutier, and will update this when he responds*), one can hope that this manifold shame will be righted in coming years. Tayari Jones recently profiled The Street in the New York Times Review of Books, highlighting the novel’s immense relevance: not only does Petry’s book showcase the effects of intersectional societal violences, especially racism, it also contributes importantly to the discussions around the #MeToo movement and the Incel subgroup/movement.

After leaving her husband in response to his infidelity, young Lutie Johnson—who spent multiple years working for a white woman on a wealthy Connecticut estate—returns to living in Harlem with her son. While she is glad to find her own place to live, she simultaneously understands that the ghetto to which she is confined as a poor, black woman severely limits her opportunities. Lutie’s feelings of oppression are heightened by the unrestricted glorifying of capitalism and luxury she was exposed to in Connecticut, the lecherous advances of her new apartment building’s super, and the strain of raising her son, Bub, by herself. While the novel takes vivid excursions into the perspectives of characters besides Lutie—including, notably, the lecherous super himself—it is Lutie’s indomitable strength and struggle that carries the story to its violent conclusion.

Petry’s novel is a highly engrossing, powerfully rendered work of literature. The characters are dynamic and vivid—sympathetic, frightening, and admirable in turn—and the setting of 1940s Harlem, with its dance halls, trash-filled streets, racist school system, ambitious young people, and backdrop of political turmoil, including the second World War, is clearly drawn and seems realistic (the caveat here being that Petry was not herself raised in Harlem or in poverty, though she did live there for some time before returning to her hometown in Connecticut). It’s certainly time for this book, the first by a Black U.S. American woman to sell more than a million copies, to be re-engaged with and returned to its rightful state of prominence.

Subjects this book includes that some readers may be sensitive to: suicide, death, racism, animal cruelty, sexual assault, incarceration of a child, murder.

*Mr. Cloutier graciously and promptly responded! He wrote: "The story isn't online because my book isn't out yet (!). Yes, I was involved in its recovery. My research led me to amass a tremendous amount of evidence that Petry had indeed donated manuscripts to Yale, and when I brought all this evidence to the American collection curator at Yale, after some digging, they found that they had an uncatalogued Petry collection. I've since had the pleasure to consult these previous literary artifacts. In my book, Shadow Archives, which should be out for the Fall 2019 catalogue from Columbia University Press, I dedicate an entire chapter to this research and the eventual retrieval of the uncatalogued collection."

I am so grateful to Mr. Cloutier for his response, and eagerly look forward to reading his forthcoming book!