Space is demarcated in particular ways, in keeping with a longer American literary tradition—from The Great Gatsby to a raft of novels by African Americans, such as Richard Wright’s Native Son, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Ann Petry’s The Street, and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain—where social and racial prejudice and segregation vie with the promised opportunity to remake the self offered by the city.

XREF: Connects to the overlapping themes in Gatsby, Native Son, Invisible Man, The Street, and Go Tell It on the Mountain — a rich cross-canonical thread on segregated urban opportunity that could enrich other readings.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 265