She sums up her own approach in a 1965 essay, writing: “These are people…Look at them and remember them.” Petry died in her Connecticut hometown in 1997. Much of Petry’s writing focuses on the issues of racial antagonism and gender explored in “Like a Winding Sheet,” shining a light on the challenges of life for everyday African Americans.

She went on to publish two more novels, Country Place (1947) and The Narrows (1953), as well as her collected short stories in Miss Muriel and Other Stories (1971). In 1946 Petry’s first novel, The Street, was published and brought her national acclaim and a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. In subsequent years she went on to publish a number of short stories under her own name, including “Like a Winding Sheet,” which was first published in 1945 in Crisis and subsequently collected into Martha Foley’s Best American Stories of 1946. In 1939, her first published story, “Marie of the Cabin Club,” appeared in The Afro American under the name Arnold Petry.

This time was hugely profitable for Petry as a writer of fiction as well, as the harsh reality of life in Harlem (which she reported on as a journalist) provided her with ample inspiration. Together the couple moved to New York City, and it was here that she began honing her journalistic skills, reporting for The People’s Voice and Amsterdam News. She began penning plays and short stories at a young age, and in 1938 she married George D. The daughter of a pharmacist, Petry attended Connecticut College of Pharmacy in her twenties and worked in the family drugstore for a number of years, while nurturing a talent for writing.

Born into a middle-class African American family in a predominantly white community, Petry developed into one of the foremost female writers on the subject of race in mid-twentieth century America.

Marie of the Cabin Club by Ann Petry