SOURCE: “The Witness,” in Studies of Black Literature, Vol. 6, Fall, 1975, pp. 24–26.

In the following essay, Madden offers an overall critique of the short story “The Witness,” stressing Petry's insights into the plight of African-Americans living in primarily white small towns.

One of the most prominent black women writers in America, Ann Petry, was born in 1911 in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. She worked as a registered pharmacist in the drugstores her family owned until she moved with her husband to New York City in 1938, where she became a witness. After working two years in the advertising department of the Harlem Amsterdam News, she edited the woman's page and wrote news stories for the Harlem People's Voice. Having witnessed every phase of life in Harlem, she decided to interpret the Negro experience to the world. An editor at Houghton Mifflin saw her first published story in The Crisis in 1943 and she...