Tragedies of life

Although biographical information on the lives and critical analysis of the works of Gertrude Pitts and Anne Scott is scarce, the recent rediscovery of these two writers helps to fill a gap in African-American literary and cultural history. Pitts's Tragedies of Life (1939), a narrative fiction and drama in three acts, is an unusually structured cautionary tale of an African-American family's journey from slavery to freedom, and the complex consequences and unfortunate twists of fate, struggle, and sacrifice that complicate upward mobility. Scott's novel George Sampson Brite (1939) recounts the antics of a recalcitrant school boy and reveals the mores, values, and attitudes of his Depression-era community. Finally, in the short story "Case 999 - A Christmas Story" (1952), Scott tells of an inner-city youth orphaned by racial violence and made a victim of both the social welfare system and of street gangs.