Can anything beat white? : a Black family's letters

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"Ann Petry (1908-1997) was a prominent African American writer during a period in which few black women were published with regularity in America. Her novels Country Place (1947) and The Narrows (1...

"Ann Petry (1908-1997) was a prominent African American writer during a period in which few black women were published with regularity in America. Her novels Country Place (1947) and The Narrows (1988), along with various short stories and nonfiction, poignantly described the struggles and triumphs of middle-class blacks living in primarily white communities." "Perry's ancestors, the James family, served as inspiration for much of her fiction. This collection of more than four hundred family letters, edited by the daughter of Ann Perry, is an engaging portrait of black family life from the 1890s to the early twentieth century, a period not often documented by African American voices." "History is made and remade by the availability of new documents, sources and interpretations. Can Anything Beat White? contributes a great deal to this process. The experiences of the James family as documented in their letters challenge representations of black people at the turn of the century as well as our contemporary sense of black Americans."--BOOK JACKET.

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