cx_oracle -- how to insert "&"

[Allen]

I am using Python with cx_oracle to load an excel spreadsheet into an
Oracle table. There are lots of text on the spreadsheet that have "&"
in them which I want to keep in the table. But inserting those text
will fail. Is there a work around for this? I can filter out the
failed insert statements and in SQLPLUS set define off  to run those
statements, but it would be nice to insert "&" directly in PYTHON.

Allen