haps the best novel to come from the followers of
Wright” (193). Like Wright’s infamous protagonist,
Bigger Thomas, Lutie Johnson, Petry’s heroine, is
pessimistically determined. She is the victim of her
heredity, environment, and gender: She is black,
poor, and female.
A resident of New York’s Harlem, Lutie finds
that she is economically trapped despite her sense
of independence and self-reliance. Although
she is a committed mother and wife and a hard
worker who believes in the American dream, Lutie
is doomed to fail, in spite of her strong Puritan
work ethic and admiration of Ben Franklin, a self-
made man whose values of bettering oneself she
shares. Forced to become a single parent and head
of household by her philandering husband, Lutie
must work to support herself and her son, Bub,
who turns to crime during his youth. Their lives
become a struggle for survival in their depressed
environment and circumscribing apartment,
where the possibility of being raped is one of the
realities Lutie must face.
The novel opens with not only a powerful
scene and commentary on American modernity,
symbolized by the street and meandering urban
bodies, but also the ultimate symbol of Lutie’s en-
trapment, the engulfing wind that tosses her about
and the filth that threatens to suffocate her as she
searches for an apartment for herself and her son:
There was a cold November wind blowing
through 116th Street. It rattled the tops of gar-
bage cans, sucked window shades out through
the top of opened windows and set them flap-
ping back against the windows; and it drove
most of the people off the street in the block
between Seventh and Eighth Avenues except a
few hurried pedestrians who bent double in
an effort to offer the least possible exposed
surface to its violent assault.... It found all
the dirt and dust and grime on the sidewalk
and lifted it up so that the dirt got into their
noses, making it difficult to breathe.... The
wind lifted Lutie Johnson’s hair away from
the back of her neck so that she felt suddenly
naked and bald. (1–2)By the end of the novel, Lutie, who commits mur-
der in self-defense, flees like a fugitive slave in the
night to escape imprisonment. Her pursuit of the
American dream is left in shambles, her innocence
lost.
The Street was received with rousing acclaims
at its publication. After its resurrection at the end
of the 20th century, critics continue to debate its
value. Bernard Bell argues that its strength lies in
the fact that “Lutie Johnson is neither psychologi-
cally tormented nor driven by fear of white peo-
ple” (179), like Wright’s Bigger. In contrast, Mary
Helen Washington argues that despite the impor-
tance of social protest fiction, “hidden beneath
the surface of deterministic fiction is an ideology
that is mainly concerned with men.” Such fiction
“threatens to marginalize and repress women in
particular” (298).BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bell, Bernard. The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradi-
tion. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1987.
Davis, Arthur P. From the Dark Tower: Afro-American
Writers 1900 to 1960. Washington, D.C.: Howard
University Press, 1974.
Petry. Ann. The Street. Boston: Beacon Press, 1946.
Washington, Mary Helen, ed. Invented Lives: Nar-
ratives of Black Women 1860–1960. Garden City,
N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1987.
Wilfred D. SamuelsSuggs, Baby
In TONI MORRISON’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel
BELOVED, Baby Suggs is an ancestor figure, a wise
elder who conveys the spiritual and philosophical
theses of the work. The mother-in-law of the pro-
tagonist, Sethe, Baby Suggs is a folk preacher who
holds “church” in the clearing in the woods beyond
124 Bluestone Road. She preaches self-love, not
only through her sermons but also through the
act of self-naming. In both instances, Baby Suggs
demonstrates that self-love brings the capacity for
loving others more deeply and spiritually.Suggs, Baby 483