![]() ![]() Her early years in Harlem were fueled by involvement in progressive political causes and membership in a community of activists, labor leaders, visual artists, actors, and writers. ![]() When she abandoned the family business for New York, she quickly found work as a journalist. The youngest daughter of a pharmacist father and entrepreneurial mother, Petry was herself a professional pharmacist who began writing short stories while working in her father’s store. The 1946 publication of her first novel, The Street, gained her widespread (and ultimately unwanted) attention as a writer and cultural figure. Yet in less than a decade, she would become the most successful black woman writer of her day. She left her hometown of Old Saybrook, Connecticut, for Harlem in 1938 to join her new husband, George, to escape the expectations of her middle-class family, and to pursue her literary ambitions. Unlike many aspiring artists who move to New York, Ann (Lane) Petry did not come in search of celebrity or fame. ![]()
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