Sara's Reviews > The Street

Hard, hard, hard. That was the only way to be--so hard that nothing, the street, the house, the people--nothing would ever be able to touch her.

Some books just make you want to scream with indignation, and Ann Petry’s The Street is one of them. I knew what to expect from this novel. Written in 1946 at the height of Jim Crow and before the passing of the Civil Rights Act, there was little hope that this would be anything but a distressing chronicle of life for the blacks sentenced to living on the poverty-stricken streets of Harlem. I knew what to expect, but that did not lessen the anguish I felt while reading it.

When we meet Lutie Johnson, she is a single parent, with hopes and aspirations that reach beyond the struggling reality of her life with her eight year old son, Bub. She is beautiful and shapely and much desired by the men around her; a ruthless bunch, but many of whom would have also desired another life had they been given any choice. Bub is young and innocent and just on the verge of being introduced to the cruelties of the world he inhabits.

It must be hate that made them wrap all Negroes up in a neat package labeled ‘colored’, a package that called for certain kinds of jobs, and a special kind of treatment. But she really didn’t know what it was.

If you looked at them from inside the framework of a fat weekly salary, and you thought of colored people as naturally criminal, then you didn’t really see what any Negro looked like. You couldn’t, because the Negro was never an individual. He was a threat, or an animal, or a curse, or a blight, or a joke.

Petry’s observations are brutal and so hard to read about, all the more so because they ring so true. I could barely comprehend the depth of the despair and hopelessness for these people. I have seen poverty, up-close and personal, but this is more than poverty, it is squallor imposed from without. You cannot help praying that Lutie and Bub will be the exceptions and find the magic door that leads to escape; you cannot help wondering if anyone will be listening to the prayer.

Bub, for me, was the central character of this story, because he represented for me all that Lutie had to hope for, all she had to lose, and, sadly, what every one of these beleaguered men once were-- malleable boys, sweet boys, children thrown away.

This book is not perfect. I could easily point out defects if I made an effort to do so, but I think this is an important book that rises above any flaws. It is so honest--a kind of miracle when you consider how ill-received it might have been in its time, for shining a light on such a deplorable practice of this society. It is a debut effort, to boot. It was the first book written by a black woman to sell over a million copies. That told me that it hit a chord with a lot of people who were either embroiled in this life or witness to it. It saddens me that it has fallen into obscurity; with only 7,160 ratings on Goodreads.

For today’s reader, I would hope that it both highlights the ways in which things that should have changed have not, but also how much progress we have made toward a goal that we might someday actually reach if we continue to work at it. A girl like Lutie Johnson might still be lost in our society, despite all her efforts, but she might also achieve all the dreams that she has, a feat virtually impossible, indeed literally prohibited, in her time.