Remembered Rapture

by bell hooks

  Indeed, as we look as this work, we bear witness to the communion of souls that takes place between Dickinson and Horn. The reality that this communion remains vibrant and interactive even though these two artists never met in the flesh challenges the conventional notion that death ends communication. The Harlem Boys Choir sings a song with the lyrics “There is no death for an angel.” There is definitely an insistence on the primacy of the immortal in Horn’s work, substances that will not lose their properties through time but merely undergo various conversions. That hint of immortality, both in the emotional bond she feels with Dickinson and in the work, the traces of love that linger, bind her both to worlds she has never known and those brave new worlds she journeys to. That palimpsest is a mapping of an inner geography that is such a powerful force, it can bring together three women from diverse backgrounds with different histories, who walk different paths, and connect us—Dickinson, Horn, hooks. In our shared immersion in the sacrament of solitude we are renewed, our spirits uplifted. Henri Nouwen writes in his meditation Out of Solitude that the experience of solitude enables us to “slowly unmask the illusion of our possessiveness and discover in the center of our own self that we are not what we can conquer, but what is given to us.” Horn’s work exults in the sharing of these gifts.

  the legacy of ann petry

  Long before feminist theorists began to think in terms of race, gender, and class, black women writers had created work that spoke from this previously unarticulated standpoint. Describing in their fictions the ways sex, race, and class work as interlocking systems of domination, Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston, and Nella Larsen were among those exceptional visionaries providing ways to understand black female experience that could not be found in print anywhere else. Among this work, Ann Petry’s novel The Street was groundbreaking. Read by millions, it showed the world the ways forces of sexism (including patriarchal domination of men over men), racism, and class oppression specifically shaped the nature of black female experience. Confrontational, The Street is hard-hitting. It has the power to knock readers off their feet. I see it happen again and again when I teach the novel in classes on black women writers. I see students awakening to the realization of the way systems of domination can work to exploit and oppress. I see them developing insights about the nature of poor black female experience that they previously did not have and feeling an empathic concern for social change that mirrors Lutie’s longings in the novel.

  The republication of The Street in paperback by its original publisher, Houghton Mifflin, has helped to create a contemporary public context where the work can receive renewed attention and the author Ann Petry can be celebrated once again. Amid all the stories we must tell again and again of black women writers whose lives were full of tragedy, abuse, brokenheartedness, unrelenting physical or psychological pain, or unceasing loneliness, it is crucial that we tell with as much passion and soulfulness the triumphant stories of the Ann Petrys of this world—that we celebrate black women writers who live long and well, whose histories are life affirming and life sustaining. Indeed, we are so accustomed to tragic autobiographical narratives of black female life that it is easy to overlook an Ann Petry. Yet she is the living embodiment of Hurston’s declaration “But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes.… No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.” Elegant at eighty-three years old, Petry lived with her husband George in the quaint New England town of Old Saybrook. Her house is one of those tender wood-framed dwellings that you drive by on a sunny afternoon and long to know who lives there. You are convinced by the serenity surrounding this dwelling that it is a house that breeds contentment, that offers comfort. When I shyly entered Ann Petry’s house a few years ago, I felt like I was coming home. There was a warmth in that two-hundred-year-old dwelling so familiar to me that it was as if I were simply returning to visit one of those dear black women teachers in my hometown who gave us so much wisdom, who educated for critical consciousness, who loved us.

  But as the old folks say, I’m getting ahead of myself. I want to backtrack for a minute and remember how it was that I came to meet Miss Petry (even though I knew she was married I could not address her as Ann and she just seemed to be the type, of black woman elder whom you always want to address with the appropriate amount of respect as Miss Petry). My first full-time teaching job was in Connecticut at Yale University. Hundreds of students flocked to my course on black women writers. I mentioned to my ever-knowledgable landlady Ruth that I was teaching Ann Petry and she shared with me that the writer lived nearby in Old Saybrook. My stunned reply was, “You mean to say she’s still alive!” I climbed the steep flights of stairs to my apartment and found to my amazement that a telephone operator gave me her home number. Daring to do what I had never done before, I called her. There was such awe and amazement in my voice when she answered and confirmed that she was indeed living that I was stumbling over my words. In my polite southern Sunday-school voice (one that is often hidden but surfaces whenever I am in a context that triggers that sense of the familiarity of home), I shared my love of her work, the joy of teaching it, and the desire to have my students be in her presence. Thrilled when she agreed to come talk to our class, I conveyed to my students that we were among the “chosen” to have an opportunity to hear Ann Petry’s voice, to be in her presence. It was crucial for me as a contemporary black woman writer to challenge the notion that “we” all die miserable, young, and poor.

  Later, over tea and wonderful bread (made by her husband, George) she shared that it was the sound of my voice that seduced her into making a rare public appearance. This brought to my mind memories of my first “grand passion,” the love letter he wrote that declared it was the sense of song in my voice that enthralled. Visiting Ann Petry and meeting her husband one encountered a real-life love story that challenges all those homegrown stereotypes that suggest a talented, powerful black woman will always have trouble finding a mate. Listening to them tell the story of how they met, of moving to New York in 1938 so George could manage a restaurant and Ann could pursue her passion for writing, sparks of their initial romantic bonding showed the love that lingered. Petry attributed finding heterosexual happiness to learning from generations of women in her family that it is best for a woman to choose only a partner who really adores and admires you. Her mother and aunts all married men who adored them. Petry commented: “I imagine if my mother or her sisters said, ‘Lie down and let me walk on you,’ these men probably would have—and said it felt good.” Petry was not suggesting that domination of one person over the other represents the ideal, or that black women are better off if we dominate and control black men. She was suggesting that when a man adores a woman within the framework of patriarchy he is already moving against the conventional sexist grain that suggests men should fear women and therefore control us. Such a man is more willing to engage in a mutual relationship, one that is constructed so that both partners can be fulfilled. George Petry has that personal confidence that makes sharing space with a powerful black woman possible. And both shared a good sense of humor. Together they made their home a place of laughter and delight.

  It is not surprising that folks who had the good fortune to encounter Ann Petry there wondered how such a serene presence could have imagined the harsh violent world depicted in The Street. Coming from a loving black family, one that knew material comfort despite racism, Petry was especially positioned to be horrifed by the way racism and poverty together created a politics of everyday life that was and is genocidal to black folks. It was as witness to this genocide as a young writer in Harlem observing the world around her that she was compelled to write a novel that would not only describe the conditions there but also be a statement of protest, one that would urge readers to change their attitudes. Petry, more than most black writers, highlights issues of class in her work. Teaching The Street I have wanted students to consider the way in which he
r standpoint as a privileged sheltered New England black girl informed the way she fictively imagined life to be on those Harlem streets. Yet students were so awed by her presence in the classroom that they were unable to address with her issues of class.

  When she entered the classroom, the space was packed with my students and all these other folks who had come to honor Ann Petry. Dwarfed by so many bodies Ann Petry suddenly appreared fragile. I was afraid that this event might be too taxing. Yet, when she began to speak the passion in her voice rocked the room. Without batting an eye, she revealed that she knew before putting pen to paper that Lutie would murder Boots. Hearing this hurt. Many of us felt the deep truth of her words. We knew from our own life experiences that often when black folks are wounded and downpressed by racism, class oppression, sexist exploitation our rage explodes in relation to other black folks.

  The Street is a portrait of black rage. Long before psychiatrists Grier and Cobbs, in Black Rage, wrote about the fierce anger that so many black people keep bottled up within, Ann Petry’s character told readers: “Every day we are choking down that rage.” In many ways Lutie is constructed as a typically feminine woman of the forties, who dreams of having a nice house, a storybook family. It is only as a worker in the white world that she begins to “awaken” to the way poor attractive black females without money are seen by white folks: “Apparently it was an automatic reaction of white people—if a girl was colored and fairly young, why, it stood to reason she had to be a prostitute. If not that—at least sleeping with her would be just a simple matter, for all one had to do was make the request. In fact, white men wouldn’t even have to do the asking because the girl would ask them on sight.” This 1940s novel had such an impact on its audience because Lutie could be any struggling poor American trying to realize the dream of working hard and struggling to achieve economic success. She does not want to be rich. In fact, the novel exposes the emptiness and unhappiness in the lives of the rich. No, Lutie just wants a good job and a nice place to live. And she is willing to work hard. Yet, Petry skillfully shows that the politics of domination work to undermine and ultimately destroy Lutie’s ambition.

  In keeping with the progressive political fiction of her day, Petry wants readers to understand that there is no inherent defect in Lutie or other poor black people. That the very “real” forces of poverty and capitalist exploitation exploit and oppress. The black and white people who survive and “make it” in The Street are those who are willing to accept the idea that it is a dog-eat-dog world, those who prey upon others. Mrs. Hedges, who becomes a madam, or Junto, the rich white man who finances the “pleasures” of the street, reveal that it is those who throw aside dreams of fulfillment and adapt to harsh realities who make it. Petry’s novel was a veiled critique of capitalism, crass materialism, and the dehumanization of American citizens. When Lutie goes to Children’s Court to see her son Bub who has been arrested for tampering with the mail, she finds that it is not just “colored” women who suffer from a society that supports the rich and crushes the poor: “She had been wrong. There were some white mothers, too.… They were sitting in the same shrinking, huddled positions. Perhaps, she thought, we’re all here because we’re all poor. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with color.” Through her experience Lutie learns about sexism (that the young black musician Boots and the rich white man Junto both believe that they should have access to her body with or without her consent, that they are both willing to use coercion). She learns daily about racism (again and again she expresses her awareness that white supremacy and hatred of blackness create a system where black folks are victimized). And she learns about class exploitation. Ultimately, Lutie must lose the “innocence” that has shielded her from the harsh realities of the street. Petry’s portrait of Lutie’s naïveté is somewhat unbelievable. Her fictional unawareness seems to belong more to the middle-class observer of poor black life in Harlem than to Lutie. As Liz, Ann Petry’s daughter, puts it: “The Street upset me dreadfully when I was young. My mother really is a very upbeat person, and I was surprised that it was so down. I can only guess at what she went through when she moved to New York and saw all these disenfranchised people, totally lacking power in a way that she and our family never did.” Even though Petry uses the character of Lutie to express some of her middle-class “horror” at the harsh reality of poor black life, it does not diminish the power of The Street. And she does not create a fiction where readers (and white readers specifically) are encouraged to identify with Lutie as the character who has aspiring middle-class values while condemning other characters.

  The Street is powerful precisely because Petry does not suggest that all poor people will respond in the same way when faced with social circumstances that would dehumanize. Mrs. Hedges is one of the heroic characters in The Street. Readers are encouraged to admire her not because she embodies conventional morality. She lives by the rules of street cultures. We are encouraged to admire her because she is able to use the resources in the environment around her to survive. Unlike Lutie, Mrs. Hedges does not feel trapped in the street. She feels at home there. Accepting the philosophy that “only the strong survive,” Mrs. Hedges adapts to the environment and triumphs over adversity. As readers we can applaud her triumph and yet also lament the narrowness of her vision. She has no place to dream of going, no world of family and kin to return to. Only in this way is she a tragic figure. Like the Super, who is portrayed as the most completely dehumanized by his environment, Mrs. Hedges is afraid of a world beyond the street. Even though she has enough money to leave the street and live elsewhere she chooses to stay. Like Min, the Super’s live-in partner, these black women know how to adapt to harsh circumstances and yet change those circumstances. As a result they are not isolated and estranged like Lutie. And it is Lutie’s isolation that makes her more vulnerable to sexist exploitation.

  With her characterization of Boots Smith, and Lutie’s husband Jim, Petry creates a graphic portrait of the way sexism converges with racism and class exploitation, perverting and distorting black gender relations. Treated as objects by the larger society all the black characters risk internalizing this thinking and treating one another as objects. This is most evident in Boots’s relationship to Lutie. When Junto, the rich white male “boss,” lets him know that he wants Lutie, Boots must decide whether he will act in complicity or attempt to rescue Lutie. It is that moment in the novel when he examines the impact of racism on his social circumstance, weighing a return to a form of poverty that makes him as a black man more likely to suffer abuse at the hands of white people over the desire to protect Lutie, which most graphically shows the way class oppression, racism, and sexism together undermine the possibility that humanizing redemptive love will win out over a politics of domination. Boots thinks: “Balance Lutie Johnson. Weigh Lutie Johnson.… Not enough. She didn’t weigh enough when she was balanced against a life of saying ‘yes sir’ to every white bastard who had the price of a Pullman ticket.”

  Concurrently, in order for Lutie to murder Boots she must see him solely as an object. When she strikes out it is not at Boots Smith “but at a handy, anonymous figure—a figure which her angry resentment transformed into everything she had hated, everything she had fought against, everything that had served to frustrate her.” Both of them ultimately objectify and dehumanize the other. What made Petry’s novel so shocking was that she gave the center stage not to the angry black male but to a type of black female that most people do not see as harboring rage. Yet, Lutie is consumed by anger and rage. Despite the novel’s sad ending, it is the expression of that rage that awakens Lutie, destroying the fantasies and dreams that have rendered her unable to respond in a productive way to the reality of her life. We do not know how Lutie will live when the novel ends. We do know that she no longer believes in the idealized myth of the American Dream. And that no clinging to this myth will enable her to face reality in a way that will allow her to grow and mature.

  The tragedy of exploita
tion and oppression Ann Petry described in 1946 is more than ever a common experience for black people and black women in particular. White people in this country continue to deny the traumatic impact of white supremacy. And only recently have we been able to examine the way race, sex, and class together determine individual social circumstance. Interviewed by Marc Fisher for the Washington Post Petry acknowledged that she saw little change in race relations: “The relationship between blacks and whites in this country is worse now than it’s ever been.” Hopefully, contemporary readers of The Street will leave the work with greater awareness of the nature of sex, race, and class oppression. And that this awareness will lead them to work to transform society and the street, so that the warmth and contentment Ann Petry was able to offer her loved ones and those strangers (like myself) who had the good fortune to enter her world will be there for everyone.

  Meeting with Ann Petry, I began to think critically about the way mass media constructs the image of “the black woman writer.” Not only was it heartwarming to encounter a famous black female writer who did not feel a need to trash younger writers to emphasize her specialness, it was inspirational to be in the presence of a black female who was never swept away by the forces of stardom. All along the way, Ann Petry made choices that reflected a primary concern with her well-being and that of her loved ones. That was a courageous stance at a time when many folks were pressuring her to become a spokesperson, to be in the limelight. Without giving up her commitment to writing, Petry chose to leave the limelight and live life on her own terms. This is a special gift. Few black women have offered such a powerful legacy to younger black female writers trying to chart contemporary journeys for ourselves and our work. Her death, after a long and fulfilling life, is a tremendous loss to those of us who cherished her presence as well as her written words. Those words are the legacy given us to keep and hold dear—now and always.