The American Dream in Ann Petry’s “The Street”

Like a lot of the texts that I teach in my classes, I hadn’t read Ann Petry’s The Street before I assigned it a few semesters back in my Multicultural American Literature course. The only work, up to this point, that I had read from Petry was her short story “Like a Winding Sheet.” A few years back, Keith Clark started talking to me about The Street, and others, in various spaces, kept saying it’s one of the best novels they have read. While I was in Norway, I found a Norwegian copy at a store and bought it. This year, I decided to teach it, and I was glad I did. While I have issues with the novel, as I do with almost any text, Petry’s writing and her narrative highlight the illusions and myths of America, specifically for African Americans. Over the next few posts, I want to look at some of these moments. Today, I want to look at the illusory nature of the American Dream throughout the novel.

From the outset of The Street, Lutie Johnson works to move her son, Bub, and herself away from the poverty and oppression that encompass their existence. In the opening chapter, Lutie looks for a new apartment, a move up from her and her son’s current living situation, and when she finds the new apartment, even with the predatory super and the dank feeling of the rooms, she sees it a “just one step farther up the ladder of success,” a step that will provide Bub with “a…