The protagonists in Ann Petry's stories, with titles like Mother Africa or The New Mirror, come from almost all social classes – middle class, lower class, working class – and backgrounds. Sometimes they depict a pharmacist family, sharing a biographical connection with the author, and other times they focus on a toddler, an artist, or a college professor. They all achieve something that many stories of this time failed to do: they provide a multifaceted view of the lives of the Black population in America. Ann Petry wrote these and other unforgettable tales in this collection more than seventy years ago, yet little has changed since then: unjust police actions and brutality against African Americans still exist, just as do the internal and inherited fears and struggles that subtly affect a large portion of the Black population.