Connecticut Goddam

Abstract Though New England born and bred, Ann Petry was reared in a family with deep Southern roots—a family history that she drew upon to infuse her New York and New England-set stories with a distinctly southern tincture. Her pioneering works open a critical space for explorations not only of northern segregation but also for a critical vector not often associated with Petry’s fiction: LGBTQ Studies. Such works as her 1953 novel The Narrows featured gay and gender non-conforming characters when it was still considered taboo. The chapter thus situates Petry as an artist whose life and work lie at the junction of three distinct historical moments and hermeneutical periods: Jim Crow, Modernism, and Queerness. Focusing on her 1958 short story “Has Anybody Seen Miss Dora Dean?,” this chapter considers Petry’s tormented racial history as a backdrop for examining the story’s Jim Crow modernist sensibilities and its que(e)rying of Black male gender comportment and sexuality.