| Ann Petry Contributor(s): Holloday, Hilary (Author) |
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ISBN: 080577842X ISBN-13: 9780805778427 Publisher: Twayne Publishers OUR PRICE: $47.52 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: July 1996 Annotation: The fiction of African-American author Ann Petry confronts prejudices of race, sex, and class and marks the ways the American dream of success and plenitude haunts, and ultimately mocks, those people who fail to achieve it. Petry calls her characters "the walking wounded". Betrayal, deep-seated anger, and murderous violence recur throughout her three novels, The Street (1946), Country Place (1947), and The Narrows (1953). Written midcentury, Petry's novels and stories are still more timely than one might like them to be, for they articulate the same pain and outrage documented by today's chroniclers of sexism and racism. In this first full-length critical study of Ann Petry's life and writings, Hilary Holladay examines the author's three novels as well as Miss Muriel and Other Stories (1971), Petry's collection of short fiction. Holladay's treatments of Petry's second novel, Country Place, and the collection of short stories - the first ever published by an African-American woman - fill gaps in existing scholarship by offering detailed readings of these previously underrepresented works. Sophisticated literary-critical analysis of Petry's works and careful consideration of the cultural and historical context in which the author wrote demonstrate the modernist aesthetic Petry's narratives share with the fiction of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf and buttress Holladay's arguments for the seminal position of Petry's oeuvre within African-American literature, and particularly within the tradition of African-American women's writing. Holladay reads Petry's stories and novels as dynamic portrayals of neighborhoods - communities within larger communities - where people's destructiveattitudes toward each other shape the neighborhood's overall identity and influence the lives of all its residents, old or young, male or female, prosperous or poor, white or nonwhite. Petry's focus on the importance of relationships and neighborhoods anticipates and inspires the writings of younger African-American women such as Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - African American - Literary Criticism | Women Authors - Literary Criticism | Children's & Young Adult Literature |
| Dewey: 813.54 |
| LCCN: 96015385 |
| Series: Twayne's United States Authors |
| Physical Information: 0.74" H x 5.77" W x 8.68" (0.76 lbs) 149 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - New England - Ethnic Orientation - African American |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Twaynes United States Authors Series presents concise critical introductions to great writers and their works. Devoted to critical interpretation and discussion of an authors work, each study takes account of major literary trends and important scholarly contributions and provides new critical insights with an original point of view. An Authors Series volumeaddresses readers ranging from advanced high school students to university professors. The book suggests to the informed reader new ways of considering a writers work. A reader new to the work under examination will, after reading theAuthors Series, be compelled to turn to the originals, bringing to the reading a basic knowledge and fresh critical perspectives. Each volume features:
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