Our October selection is The Street by Ann Petry, a novel that tells the poignant story of Lutie Johnson, a young black woman struggling to raise her son amid the violence, poverty and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s. Lutie’s determined pursuit of the American dream is made increasingly difficult by daily battles against racism, sexism, and the conditions in her neglected neighborhood. Ann Petry once said, “In The Street, my aim is to show how simply and easily the environment can change the course of a person’s life.”
Published in 1946, The Street was the first book by a black woman to sell over one million copies. It’s a timely selection given current events, and should provide us with a lot to talk about. Discussion begins October 1st. Please join us!
By the way, just for a point of comparison in terms of how popular The Street was back in the day, "Little Fires Everywhere has spent 47 weeks on the New York Times’ bestseller list and has sold nearly 500,000 units in hardcover and 410,000 in paperback." (That’s from BuzzFeed News this past March.) The Street sold 1.5 million copies in the 1940s.
What themes don’t resonate with modern day America? Racism, sexism, white privilege, the vicious cycle of poverty, single motherhood, affordable child care, unequal educational opportunities, segregated neighborhoods, urban violence. With the exception of Mrs. Hedges, and—in a small way—Min, I found the novel to be a treatise on man’s inhumanity to man (or more particularly, to woman). There was so much cruelty — from the sociopathic version exhibited by Mr. Jones to the close-minded version exhibited by Bub’s white teacher Miss Rinner, to all the smaller interactions in-between, be it with shark lawyers, heartless police detectives, or racist, uncharitable employers.
If I had read this novel in 1946, I would have presumed that 2020 would have brought dramatic change to the world, that 74 years into the future, places like the Street would be on their way to becoming harmonious cities of light. Alas, no. Although of course there have been some beneficial changes, it’s discouraging to see how much has remained the same.
The Street was a good read. I find it hard to say “like” since I felt sad after finishing it. I was really hoping for a happy ending, but spent much of the novel fearing what was coming next.
I agree with you @Mary13, I was so discouraged at how so much of the story could still be included in a 2020 novel.
The novel starts with a description of the street. Petry paints a harsh picture. She describes the cold and windy fingers of the wind violently assaulting pedestrians. We can see the garbage blowing around, we see the buildings, and we hear the sounds. Petry’s introduction to the street is very visual. It is also a bit of an omen, although I didn’t realize it at the time.
The street symbolizes the life of its inhabitants, including Lutie’s. It is the place she wants to leave and the place she has to stay. Everything she does is done with the future goal of leaving the street. At the beginning Lutie was trying to take control of her life. Was she ever really in control? Or, is the street, and what it symbolizes, always in control?
Honestly I found this a very difficult book to read. It was just so unrelentingly grim. I felt like I was being hammered over the head with the message. While I can’t condone Mrs. Hedges, at least she seemed to be mostly content with her life. I have some hope for Min. (Do we know what her job was?) It was depressing that whatever Lute’s civil service job was, it didn’t really pay enough to cover her and a child. Like so many jobs today.
This was a depressing and difficult book to read for me too. It was as if Lutie Johnson was destined to never catch a break in life — everything that could go wrong, did. The street (and its inhabitants) swallowed her ambitions for a better life for herself and her son.
I wanted to have one small slice of good news but apart from Min’s escape (we shall never know if it is from the frying pan to the fire?) from Jones, there was nothing. I would like to hope she went on doing her cleaning jobs and continued her hand-to-mouth existence safely somewhere else.
I don’t blame Mrs. Hedges for how she made the street work for her but I couldn’t accept her treatment of Lutie. She could, if she wanted to, have helped Lutie. But I guess in such a harsh environment, to survive, she can’t afford any weaknesses.
I think Petry’s success as an author is making her readers experience a full range of emotions — she squeezes every last bit out of you. You’re never passive. I went from pitying Lutie to disliking her intensely. Although I think her attack on Boots was warranted, I can’t abide her decision to abandon her son to the mercies of the street or the ineffectual social services system.
I feel like Petry wants to underline the theme of rage, disdain and pride as being draining emotions that make you unproductive. She seems to be suggesting that the men use those emotions as crutches to limp through life while the women soldier on despite them. And maybe I’m reading more than was meant to be.
I can’t truthfully say that I enjoyed this book but I appreciated what it had to say. I would like to hope that we have made progress in the years since but it seems as if we’ve only exchanged new problems for the old without completely solving many of the old issues.
I read it very quickly, with a sense of impending doom that turned out to have been accurate. It’s amazing how relevant many of the scenes were to today (and sad) and I thought the book really highlighted what would come to be called intersectionality – Lutie had the trifecta of race, gender and social class against her from the start.
I found it inconceivable that Lutie would have abandoned her son. I also found it hard to believe that Lutie couldn’t find anyone to watch Bub after school. Lutie did lots of things right, but nothing ever worked out for her due to “the system.” The world was filled with so many evil people trying to take advantage of her.
Nevertheless, I was fascinated by this book. As @Mary13 said above (Post #7), not much has really changed in 74 years – and that’s the most depressing thing of all.
I think Mrs. Hedges did try to help Lutie. First, of course, she physically saved her from rape at the hands of Jones. She saved Bub from being beaten up by the bullies. And she offered Lutie the only “out” she could, to be a paid woman for Junto. And beyond Lutie, she let the sailor and Mary spend his last night together, on his mere assurance he’d pay her later, and she told Min where to find the “root doctor.” As Junto said often, Mrs. Hedges was “a wonderful woman.”
That’s what makes this book so interesting. So many ways to view things.
Yep. I think “dread” was the overriding emotion as I turned each page. I was particularly terrified that something awful was going to happen to Bub every time he was left alone.
I agree. And I would add that I don’t think Mrs. Hedges saw anything wrong with her role as a Madam; on the contrary, she recognized that it gave her power, and that’s what she was offering to Lutie.
When she was sane, it would have been totally inconceivable. But by the end of the book, Lutie has gone mad, more or less. She can’t think straight, she hallucinates, and she doesn’t just kill Boots – she bludgeons him repeatedly in a fit of rage, with a blow for every injustice in her life.
Doesn’t she have to abandon Bub anyway? I mean, even if she were in her right mind, she couldn’t stick around after committing the murder. If she weren’t caught by police, she’d be blackmailed by Junto and caught in his trap instead.
As for leaving Bub alone after school, I think there are a couple issues at play. One is that Lutie doesn’t have a network of friends. She keeps to herself and that shuts her off from any kind of neighborhood arrangement that other mothers might be working out. The other is that I don’t think it was so unusual at that time for an eight-year old to be on his own for most of the day. It was a different era in terms of what was considered safe for kids after school.
I agree with lack of after-school care, maybe. However, Lutie also sent Bub off to the movies alone at night and then headed to Junto’s for a beer. Bub came home to an empty apartment.
I like to think Lutie calls her dad and Lil at an upcoming train stop (knowing she probably doesn’t) and lets them know about her circumstances and about Bub. Granddad goes that next day to Bub and gives what support he can. Maybe even Bub gets to go home with his granddad. As Lutie points out somewhere in the book, her dad has skated close but has never been in trouble with the law. Lil is home all day and seems to like the boy. (Looking on the brighter side here.)
Not a Lutie fan … she never even asked Bub what happened to land him in trouble with the law.
I like Mrs. Hedges, Min, and even Junto. All survive life on the street in their own individual ways. And for what it’s worth, I consider all the above secondary characters. The street itself is the main character (kinda like the house in The Haunting of Hill House.) Everyone else is just a player in the drama.
I too feel like Mrs. Hedges did what she could. I even think there are some women who don’t mind being prostitutes, (but far more who are terribly exploited.) I thought Junto came off surprisingly well given that he was white. I thought the white teacher who had given up on her kids was a needless slap at all teachers - I’ve known many white teachers who work in the South Bronx and cared deeply about their kids.
I think part of the reason I had such a hard time reading the book - I put it down for two weeks and then read the last few chapters on September 30 - was because I really did not end up feeling much empathy for Lutie. I know she had bad options, but I think some of her choices made things much worse.
She already knows what happened from Mrs. Hedges (although not the Super’s involvement). Not pursuing it with Bub seems to be due to the time allotted rather than an oversight. She said what she felt was most important, and…
I am not a Lutie fan either – that is, I can’t warm to her at all, and she’s too quick to slap the you-know-what out of her 8-year old son. (Maybe that’s a foreshadowing of the violence she’s capable of later.) However, I admire her determination to keep trying to improve her situation while maintaining her integrity. Are we (the readers) supposed to like her? I feel like one of the messages from the get-go is that she is hard, angry and bitter because the world (aka the Street) has made her that way.
I wondered why that was inserted, especially since the character is non-existent otherwise. My only guess is that she’s sort of a flip image of Junto: He is a white male who is not racist, but whom white society would see as a “bad” person; she is a white female who is racist, but whom white society would see as a “good” person.
The book also ends with a slap against teachers: Lutie on the train recalling a teacher of her own: “I don’t why they make us bother to teach you people to write.”
