African Diasporic Short Fiction | Hilary Holladay (essay date fall 1994)
Hilary Holladay (essay date fall 1994)
SOURCE: Holladay, Hilary. “Creative Prejudice in Ann Petry's ‘Miss Muriel.’” Studies in Short Fiction 31, no. 4 (fall 1994): 667-75.
[In the following essay, Holladay explores the depiction of racial, socioeconomic, and sexual prejudice in a small community in Ann Petry's “Miss Muriel.”]
In Miss Muriel and Other Stories (1971), Ann Petry reveals her continuing fascination with the way people are shaped by the company they keep. Although these stories were originally published over a long period of time (from the 1940s to 1971) they cohere geographically and thematically.1 All of the works take place in New York or New England, and, while taking up a multiplicity of perspectives, they share a preoccupation with race, gender, and class, among other characteristics that often incite prejudice. But Petry's stories, like her novels (The Street, 1946; Country...
[The entire page is 3732 words long]
Navigate
