Ann Petry Livres

Exploring the profound impact of race in America, this collection features two significant novels by a leading African American author. The works delve into the complexities of racial identity, societal struggles, and the enduring effects of systemic racism, offering a poignant reflection on the historical and contemporary issues surrounding race relations in the United States.

This quintessential middle grade biography of Harriet Tubman now features a cover by NAACP Image Award winner and Caldecott Honor illustrator Kadir Nelson, a foreword by National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds, and additional new material. Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad was praised by the New Yorker as “an evocative portrait,” and by the Chicago Tribune as “superb.” It is a gripping and accessible portrait of the heroic woman who guided more than 300 slaves to freedom and who is expected to be the face of the new $20 bill. Harriet Tubman was born a slave and dreamed of being free. She was willing to risk everything—including her own life—to see that dream come true. After her daring escape, Harriet became a conductor on the secret Underground Railroad, helping others make the dangerous journey to freedom. This award-winning introduction to the late abolitionist, which was named an ALA Notable Book and a New York Times Outstanding Book, includes additional educational back matter such as a timeline, discussion questions, and extension activities.

A Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Novel - Taken from back cover: The Street is the poignant and unblinkingly honest story of Lutie Johnson, a young black woman, and her struggle to live and raise a son amid the violence poverty and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s. The Street was Ann Petry's first novel, a best seller with more than a million and half copies in print.

"It's Saturday, past midnight, and thick fog rolls in from the river like smoke. Link Williams is standing on the dock when he hears quick footsteps approaching, and the gasp of a woman too terrified to scream. After chasing off her pursuer, he takes the woman to a nearby bar to calm her nerves, and as they enter, it's as if the oxygen has left the room: they, and the other patrons, see in the dim light that he's Black and she's white. Link is a brilliant Dartmouth graduate, former athlete and soldier who, because of the lack of opportunities available to him, tends bar; Camilo is a wealthy married woman dissatisfied with and bored of her life of privilege. Thrown together by a chance encounter, both Link and Camilo secretly cross the town's racial divide, defying the social prejudices of their times."--Publisher marketing.

From the author of the bestselling novel The Street, comes a powerful collection of stories that captures a remarkably diverse panorama of African American experience in the 1950s and 1960s. A small-town pharmacist's decision to take a day off leads his wife to an agonizing encounter with the police. A retired Black college professor teaching at a predominately white high school is kidnapped and forced to witness an unthinkable horror. A young Black girl watches her aunt's suitors threaten her family's wellbeing, with repercussions that reverberate for decades. Ann Petry wrote these and the other extraordinary stories in this collection over half a century ago, but the problems they interrogate still exist today, incisively uncovering the consequences of America's pervasive racism, while telling timeless stories of everyday lives, of aspiration, frustration, and love. Originally published between 1945 and 1971, Petry's stories capture the essence of African American experience since the 1940s.

"Johnnie Roane has come home from four years of fighting in World War II to his loving parents and his beautiful wife, Gloria. But his first doubts of Gloria's infidelity are created on the way home by the local taxi driver, a passionate gossip, and these doubts which mature with the hurricane that is bearing down on them darkening the seemingly perfect town of Lennox, Connecticut. But a greater violence lurks beneath the surface of the storm...Country Place is a classic, page-turning story that masterfully captures the transformation of small-town life in America from one of the twentieth century's finest writers."--Goodreads

Harriet Tubman wurde in der Sklaverei geboren und träumte davon, frei zu sein. Sie war bereit, alles zu riskieren – auch ihr eigenes Leben -, um diesen Traum wahr werden zu lassen. Nach ihrer waghalsigen Flucht war sie Teil der geheimen Organisation »Underground Railroad« und half anderen auf dem gefährlichen Weg in die Freiheit. Die Organisation »Underground Railroad« war von etwa 1849 bis zum Ende des Amerikanischen Bürgerkriegs aktiv, sie half geflüchteten Sklaven, aus den Südstaaten in die Nordstaaten der USA oder nach Kanada zu gelangen. Harriet Tubman war die bekannteste afroamerikanische Fluchthelferin dieser Organisation. Nachdem sie selbst im Jahr 1849 erfolgreich der Sklaverei entflohen war, kehrte sie unter dem Codenamen Moses mehrfach in die Südstaaten zurück, um anderen Sklaven auf ihrer Flucht behilflich zu sein. Im Amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg arbeitete sie als Kundschafterin für die Nordstaaten. In ihren späteren Lebensjahren engagierte sie sich in der Frauenbewegung. Heute zählt Harriet Tubman in den USA zu den bekanntesten historischen Persönlichkeiten des Abolitionismus.

Ann Petrys Geschichten bieten einen facettenreichen Blick auf das Leben der schwarzen Bevölkerung in Amerika, mit Protagonisten aus verschiedenen sozialen Schichten. Trotz der zeitlichen Distanz sind Themen wie Polizeigewalt und innere Ängste, die die afroamerikanische Gemeinschaft betreffen, weiterhin relevant.