Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964)
Portrait of Ann Petry, November 12, 1948
Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
"Has Anybody Seen Miss Dora Dean?"
Ann Petry’s 1946 debut novel The Street was the first book by an African American woman to sell more than a million copies. She was also one of the first Black authors published by The New Yorker. Her short story “Has Anybody Seen Miss Dora Dean?” ran on October 25, 1958. Petry explored themes of class, respectability, and identity in her depiction of the last days of Sarah Forbes, the matriarch of a Black family in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Petry’s meditative piece examines the complex experiences of postwar Black families in the North, published four years before James Baldwin’s searing critique of American race relations, “Letter from a Region in My Mind.”
: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
Currently on View at Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
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