It rattled the tops of garbage cans, sucked window shades out through the top of opened windows and set them flapping back against the windows and it drove most of the people off the street in the block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues except for a few hurried pedestrians who bent double in an effort to offer the least possible exposed surface to its violent assault. There was a cold November wind blowing through 116th Street. But in her struggle to earn money and raise her son amid the violence, poverty and racial dissonance of her surroundings, Lutie is soon trapped: she is a woman alone, ‘too good-looking to be decent’, with predators at every turn. Having left her unreliable husband, Lutie believes that, with hard work and resolve, she can begin again she has faith in the American dream. In a crumbling tenement in Harlem, Lutie Johnson is determined to build a new life for herself and her eight-year-old boy, Bub – a life that she can be proud of. A gripping novel from 1946, The Street is prescient and powerful and as relevant today as it was when first published.
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