I haven't felt so mindfucked from an ending since Bend Sinister. Yet, whereas Nabokov does it simply because he can, in The Street it serves to underline the message, and I would say message rather than plot because Petry was a political writer and this novel certainly is that, besides being a wonderful piece of fiction. Some books shouldn't have happy endings, life in 1940's Harlem as a single mother didn't often have a happy ending and some types of books should just completely break you becau More...

The Street, by Ann Petry, is one of my all-time favorite books. Sometimes I find I have a physical relationship to the object of a book, and this is a paramount example.

In college, I volunteered at a books for prisoners program, where we would package books per prisoner's requests. Aside from the delightful (and perhaps naive, or at least simplistic) joy of hoping that books could address the systemic oppression and human toll that is prison (and the crimes that put people there), I got to handl More...

This book is about the streets of Harlem, and the difficulties in getting off the street for blacks. Particularly, Lutie Johnson gets an apartment on 116th St. and hates it from the get-go. She has a little boy to raise and is afraid he'll get sucked in by the gangs, drugs etc. that keep the black people from getting out of the neighborhood. It's interesting how she feels about white people. The cast of characters includes another tenant, Mrs. Hedges, the superintendent, and his live-in girlfrie More...

Professionals say our environment is a major part of what we become later in life. Lutie Johnson didn't need a psychologist or social worker to tell her these words. Deep down in her heart she knew 116th street would never make her. It could only break her. Everyday her constant thought is how to get away from the street
before it's destructive powers destroyed her little boy, Bub. Sadly, her environment is a major battle she can never win. I learned that no matter how hard I try to remove mysel More...

Petry has real talent with creating poignant imagery that relates the physical environment to the mood of the scene. She vividly described settings so that even the most mundane (such as discarded paper swirling in the street) seemed to take on an ephemeral clarity. Mostly importantly, this book felt real; I didn't feel tempted to dismiss it as a romanticized version of "the hard knock life". Petry deftly wove her characters together but perhaps most amazing was how she used back story to instil More...

In 1944 Lutie Johnson believes that all it takes is hard work to succeed, so when she finds an apartment in Harlem that she can move into with her son, Bub, she sees it as a step up. Get him away from her dad’s gin-drinking girlfriend and all the roomers packed in the house. But it seems as though her hard work does nothing against the street and the walls that the white people build around the colored people brick by brick.

This book is a heart-breaking representation of how racism tore apart bl More...

I was introduced to Ann Petry's work several years ago through her amazing short story, "Like a Winding Sheet," a haunting story about a loving couple whose relationship becomes mangled by the insidiousness of the prejudice swirling around them. It has remained a favorite of mine to read (and to teach). Having finished The Street, I can now say that Petry can write about the devastations of racism like no one else. She one-ups Richard Wright by tackling a similar political agenda but without sac More...

I received this book as a gift from my grandmother. She wrote a small note in the insert of the book that says she read this book when she was 16 (she is now 78) because she grew up in Harlem near 116th street where this story takes place.

The Street is about a woman name Lutie Johnson-young,smart,strong willed and determined to rise above the poverty and racism that constrains her on a daily basis. After an unsuccessful youthful marriage, she becomes a single woman raising her son in Harlem 195 More...

It will be a long time before I forget the experience of reading Ann Petry’s The Street. A vivid analysis of race and class injustice in World War II-era New York City framed by the personal account of single mother Lutie Johnson, The Street is as heartbreaking today as it was in 1946, the year of its publication. Petry’s straightforward, omniscient style of writing is a perfect complement to the story, communicating its tragic message with unflinching clarity.

At the forefront of Petry’s novel More...

I have always wanted to read this book, but was somehow never presented with the opportunity to read it until this weekend. I am awfully angry that I took so long to read it, for it was an amazing novel. Well written, gripping, and dismal, 'The Street' presents the reader with a disturbing story of a woman struggling in Harlem to raise her son alone, on a street populated with poor Blacks. Ann Petry proved herself as such a talented writer, that she became the first African American woman to sel More...

What can I say?? A very very powerful story. I know by the time this year (2012) ends, this book would have had an impact on me, more than any other book that I've read. As well as being a work of fiction, it also ‘acted’ like a thriller as I was sitting on the edge of my sofa trying to anticipate exactly how it would end. But Petry beat me to it!

Is this book about racism? As you get into this story you think so but as you read on you realise that racism is just one of the factors but it is not More...

A phenomenal story. "The street" itself is actually one of the novel's main characters, taking on a life of its own throughout the story. As noted on page 323 in Lutie Johnson's thoughts, referring to her Harlem ghetto neighborhood,

"Streets like the one she lived on were no accident. They were the North's lynch mobs...the methods the big cities used to keep Negroes in their place." (323)

Not only that, but "and while you were out working to pay the rent on this stinking, rotten place, why, the s More...

why The Street isn't in the pantheon of classics confounds me. while it's true some of the descriptions drag on, the perspective of the novel is brilliant and illuminating. the story is mostly Lutie Johnson's to tell. but other inhabitants of the city street in Harlem in the 1940s have their turn to tell their story. the story is inspirational in parts as Lutie struggles to get out of her conditions. but mostly it is disheartening as she goes against the endemic racism that prohibits her from su More...

The Street is a brutal examination of racism, sexism, and poverty in America. Set in 1940s Harlem, Ann Petry's novel primarily tells the story of Lutie Johnson, a young single mother, and her son Bub. In the process, she tells the story of many of the street's inhabitants, allowing the reader an intimate peek inside each of their lives as she reveals all the pain and disappointment that makes them who they are.

The best part of Petry's novel, though, is how relevant it remains 60+ years after it More...

Truly a remarkable book. It's sometimes hard to remember that she wrote this in the 1940s; it still reads as relevant. Petry offers us both the external view of people and their internal vulnerable self. People take actions, with their own worldview in mind, and affect others' lives so deeply. She teaches us that we don't always know why people behave as they do. The sum of small, daily indignities add up to ruin lives. And end in the individual feeling it is her fault when it's not; yet she can More...

This is an classic with the same feel as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The similarity that never changes is poverty in an urban setting. However, Lutie is a young mother trying to protect her son and Frankie is a young girl. This story takes place in Harlem and was published in 1946. Petry become the first African American writer to sell more than one million copies of a novel. One feels the influence of Richard Wright in Petry's writing; but the tone is more personal: we feel Lutie's struggles are More...

The ending of this novel is perhaps the most heartbreaking thing you'll ever read. However, Petry is masterful in her ability to understand the motivations of even the most odious characters. She also does a brilliant job of trapping the reader in the same way she traps Lutie Johnson in her life, through no fault of her own. I've taught this novel several times, and although students are usually unhappy with the ending, they eventually have to admit that there's no other ending that makes any se More...

This novel shatters the illusion of the American Dream very effectively and it should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand Amercian social history druing WWII. It is to American social history what All Quiet on the Western Front is to the history of trench warfare in WWI. It is absolutely amazing to me that this novel was first published in 1946! It effectively exposes the challenges faced by the dispossessed and the disempowered to overcome the slavery of racism, prejudice, s More...

I try to rate books on their language, structure, and so on. Whether I actually enjoyed it in the "I want to curl up with this book, coffee, and chocolate" sense is not as important for me; and whether I agree with it all or not is also not as important. It is not fair to the author's ability and Ann Petry deserves many stars for writing ability. This is a heartbreaking and painful novel. It is haunting. It will have a special place on my reading shelf however, because it reminds me of things I More...

NOTE: If you haven't read "The Street" yet, I won't describe too much of the story so to not reveal all of the plot and twists!

I thought this book was pretty good...the story is set in Harlem in the 1940s, and once you start reading it, you realize that Ann Petry's "street" is much like our inner cities of today in 2013! Her "street" is full of single women, single mothers, unemployed men, squalor, abuse, violence, gangs, theft, prostitution, drug use, poverty, racism---all of the ingredients th More...

This book was incredible. There wasn't a dull moment and it wasn't a page-turner so much as it was one of those books that every so often blesses you with a page so good you hesitate to turn it before thoroughly reading it a second time.

I read this for my Working-Class Literature class and assumed it would be some kind of gritty urban fiction with a feminist angle but it went so far above and beyond that. Every page was rife with symbolism and the characters were so complex and three-dimensional More...

I found the The Street by Ann Petry devastating. Almost too much realism, I could only take so much at any one sitting. Then, I would have to put it down and only pick it up again later, when I felt ready for more.

The descriptive prose and imagery were beautiful; she grips you from the very beginning:

There was a cold November wind blowing through 116th Street. It rattled the tops of garbage cans, sucked window shades out through the top of opened windows and set them flapping back against the wi More...

I'm hesitant to give this four stars for a couple of reasons: one, because I know it was flawed in certain important ways, but to me the stars have to do with how much I personally enjoyed a book, not how technically "good" it was, so I think that's okay. The main reason I'm afraid of singing this book's praises too loudly is that I really loved it, and being able to see its problems and knowing other people might not think it's good really hurts my feelings. I feel protective of this book, and More...

The Street is a novel in the tradition of Richard Wright's Native Son. It is concerned with the lives of poor urban African Americans during the 1940s and it provides a gritty, realistic view of their lives. Petry's novel is even more convincing an argument than Wright's, however. Where Wright's work gains power through its almost claustrophobic focus on Bigger, Petry is able to provide the reader with insights into multiple characters on the street, even though her focus is primarily Lutie John More...

This was the book club pick of the month for February, it was definitely an interesting read.But if you are looking for a story that is pretty depressing all the way through that has a happy ending, this is not your book. I was pretty interested in the story the whole way through up until the end. I figured it was going to be a "Cinderella" kind of story not so much. I also thought a little of The Help and compared Lutie Johnson to Abileen. I think those two are very similar characters. I was ce More...

The Street by Ann Petry has a uniqueness in the way it presents the prejudice towards blacks in the city of New York (and America in general) during the 40s. The story depicts the life of a young charming black women who’s entire life is a rollercoaster ride through bad times and even worst times. The Street touches white prejudice, poverty, fears, evil, love, hate, and the miserable life of blacks during a time of discrimination.

It wasn't quite as dark and hopeless as I thought it was going to be. I kept waiting and waiting for some of the sorts of things that happened in "Push" to happen here. They didn't, but the ending was absolutely hopeless. the whole book places a very strong emphasis on the plight of blacks and how whites keep them down. it is a horrible vicious cycle that all poor people seem to get trapped in, and even worse for ethnicities other than whites.

This is Ann Petry's moving and thought provoking debut novel that was written in 1946. It's the story about a young black woman, Lutie, and her determined efforts to raise her son in the poverty, violence and racial climate of Harlem in the late 1940's.
I HIGHLY recommend this book!! This is a stary that sticks with you long after you've finished reading the book. I look forward to reading the other 4 books that she wrote.

Why haven't I ever heard of this book before? I randomly picked it up as a book on tape at the library. Each time I was in my car I couldn't wait to see what happens next. This book should be read in High School or atleast in a college Freshmen english. This book could have been written last year for the themes and characters haven't changed much since the 1940's. I was stunned by this book.