The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry

To a significant extent, this very limited critical perspective on Petry developed because both of these works appeared at a time after the publication in 1940 of Wright's Native Son, a novel that made a vast impact on the maledominated literary establishment and enshrined naturalistic protest as the dominant African American literary mode. [...]critics and readers neglected an oeuvre which included novels, short stories, literature for children/adolescents, and essays. Petty's writing is sui generis, rich, and indeed, radical. Besides "Like a Winding Sheet" and The Street, the main works Clark explores are Petry's other novels, Country Place (1947) and The Narrows (1953), and other stories, "The Bones of Louella Brown" (1947), "In Darkness and Confusion" (1947), "Has Anybody Seen Miss Dora Dean?" (1958), "Miss Muriel" (1963), and "The Witness" (1971).