SOURCE: “A World Made Cunningly: A Closer Look at Ann Petry's Short Fiction,” in CLA Journal, Vol. 30, September, 1986, pp. 14–30.

In the following essay, Washington analyzes the style, structure, and characterization in the stories in Miss Muriel and Other Stories and urges more critical attention to Petry's works.

In the September 1979 issue of the CLA Journal, Rita Dandridge calls attention to the fact that the novels of black women have received much less critical attention than those of their male counterparts. She points out that the critics, being mostly male and frequently white, have generally dismissed the novels by black women with merely a perfunctory glance; and on the few occasions when they have deigned to take a close look, they have approached these works with “apathy, chauvinism, or paternalism.” She further asserts that while these approaches differ, they have a pernicious similarity in that each tends to “minimize...