Praisesong for the Widow

by Paule Marshall

THE LITERARY WORK

A novel set during the late 1970s in Grenada and Carriacou, with flashbacks to the 1940s-1960s New York and South Carolina; published in 1983.

SYNOPSIS

A middle-aged, middle-class African American widow undergoes a spiritual journey and comes to terms with her troubled past while vacationing in the Caribbean.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

The Novel in Focus

For More Information

Born in Stuyvesant Heights, New York in 1929, Paule Marshall was the daughter of immigrants from Barbados. She grew up in a largely immigrant community and, after graduating from Brooklyn College in 1953, worked as a journalist for Our World, a small black magazine. During her employment there, Marshall wrote her first novel Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), which dealt with the issues of ethnic autonomy and assimilation. Later, she published a collection of short stories, Clap Hands and Sing (1961), and a second novel, The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (1969). While Marshall’s works were well received, she did not become widely known as an author. Her third novel, Praisesong for the Widow, was not published until 1983, but then garnered critical praise for its unlikely heroine—a well-to-do African American widow—and her quest to rediscover her cultural identity.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

Grenada—an overview

In Praisesong for the Widow, the true journey of the African American protagonist begins on the remote West Indian island of Grenada. Discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1498, Grenada was originally named Concepcion and inhabited by fierce Carib Indians; the latter circumstance may have discouraged Spanish settlers from establishing a colony there. In 1652 the French became the first to colonize the island—known by then as Grenada—and in 1674, Grenada officially became French territory. By this time, the region had begun importing African slaves as laborers because the native populations had fallen victim to disease and harsh conditions resulting from their contact with the colonists.

On Grenada, French settlers planted indigo, tobacco, and, later, sugar. The colony prospered, attracting the attention of the British, who captured it in 1762, during the Seven Years’ War. The French retook the island briefly in 1779 but it was returned to the British in 1783 and they governed it as a colony until 1958. Like the French, the British colonizers established sugar plantations and imported large numbers of African slaves to work those plantations. All this slave labor had far-reaching ramifications for the racial composition of Grenada; during the 1980s, approximately 91 percent of the island’s population was black. East Indians and whites constituted only 9 percent (Meditz, p. 352).

In 1958 Grenada, along with nine other island territories, formed the West Indies Federation, but the union, plagued by differences between Jamaica and Trinidad—the two largest members—collapsed after only a few years. Subsequently, Britain granted independence to its West Indian colonies; Grenada became an independent country in 1974. Five years later, Maurice Bishop staged a military coup that attempted to establish a Marxist state, modeled on Cuba and the Soviet Union. Bishop himself was overthrown and killed by Vice Minister Bernard Coard in 1983, leading to joint military intervention by Caribbean and U.S. troops, which succeeded in restoring democratic government to Grenada.

Like the other West Indian islands, Grenada’s economy was based largely on agriculture. Its major export crops included cocoa, nutmeg, bananas, mace, sugarcane, and cotton. Agriculture got competition during the 1980s from what became another major facet of the island’s economy. Grenada experienced a boom in tourism, especially after the Marxist revolutionary government was overthrown. In 1985, the number of cruise-ship passengers who visited Grenada was about 90,000, nearly three times the number who had visited the previous year; receipts from tourism amounted to $23.8 million in U.S. currency (Meditz, p. 363). To accommodate the increased number of tourists, the island had to build more large hotels, some with as many as 500 to 600 rooms.

In Praisesong for the Widow, Avey experiences firsthand the beginning of the tourist boom in Grenada. After deciding to leave the Caribbean cruise, she disembarks upon the island and finds herself witnessing two aspects of its culture: the traditional, in the form of out-islanders (people who work in Grenada but were not born there) preparing to depart for an annual excursion to Carriacou, and the modern, in the form of increasing urban development. The taxi driver who rescues the disoriented widow reassures her that he will find accommodations befitting her position and means, “Plenty hotels, oui. That’s all we got in Grenada now. And only the best … I gon’ take you to one to suit” (Marshall, Praisesong for the Widow, p. 75).

Carriacou—culture and celebrations

The most significant step in Avey’s journey is her decision to go on an excursion to the remote island of Carriacou. Included in the chain of West Indian islands known as the Grenadines, Carriacou lies between St. Vincent to the north and Grenada to the south; legally, Carriacou and Petite Martinique belong to the state of Grenada. Although Carriacou is considered one of the larger Grenadine islands, its proportions are still quite small: only 7.5 miles long and 2.5 miles wide.

The society of Carriacou is described as “neoteric,” meaning that it developed from plantation societies composed of European masters and African slaves, with little input from an indigenous population. The blending of colonial administrations—both French and English—with African cultural traditions is one of Carriacou’s most distinctive features. Anthropologist Donald R. Hill writes,

Carriacou society is made up of two components, metropolitan and folk. … The organized political, economic, educational, and religious structure of the island is largely of French and British origin. This social structure is maintained by metropolitan institutions and modified by the folk society. The folk society has its origins in the traditional cultures brought to the island from West Africa, the Congo, Britain, and France. During the early colonial period, a single yet varied folk society emerged from these diverse sources. The folk society of present-day Carriacou is the result of continuous interplay between the traditional folk culture and the metropolitan culture.

(Hill, pp. 196–97)

This interplay between folk and metropolitan cultures seems especially apparent during marriages, baptisms, and funerals, as well as during holidays like Christmas, New Year, Carnival, Easter, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day. Most Carriacouans are either Catholic or Anglican; however, their celebrations are marked not only by prayers and church services but by fetes—often known as “Big Drums” because drums are the main instruments—where traditional African songs and dances are performed. Especially popular are the Nation Dances, each of which is said to belong to a specific African tribe—for example, the Cromanti, Moko, Igbo (formerly spelled Ibo), or Chamba. Another Big Drum dance is the Beg Pardon, during which the dancers kneel and ask forgiveness from their ancestors for various transgressions.

Carriacouan rituals and dances play a pivotal role in Praisesong for the Widow. Suffering from some mysterious disorder of body and spirit, Avey Johnson only discovers the cause after encountering Lebert Joseph, an ancient Carriacouan of Chamba descent, who persuades her to accompany him on his annual excursion to the island. Witnessing and then participating in the African rituals faithfully preserved on Carriacou enables Avey to reclaim her heritage and to free herself of the materialism that has oppressed her for so many years.

Black history and genealogy

During the 1970s many African Americans became increasingly concerned with defining their culture and place in history. New works—both fictional and non-fictional—were published that addressed those very issues, including John Blassingame’s The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Ante-bellum South (1972), Gerda Lerner’s Black Women in White America (1973), and Ernest Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971).

Arguably, the most influential of these works was Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Roots (1976), a fictionalized memoir tracing the author’s family history from the capture and enslavement of a single man, Kunta Kinte, in eighteenth-century Africa to the time of Haley himself. An international bestseller, Roots was made into two highly rated television miniseries—airing in 1977 and 1978—which heightened African Americans’ interest in family history and genealogy. In 1977 Charles Blockson’s Black Genealogy, a popular guide for those who wanted to trace family trees, appeared in print; the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society was founded that same year.

Black women were no less enthusiastic than black men about rediscovering and excavating the past. In In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens (1974), Alice Walker explored the rituals and art forms of black southern women, including quilting, gardening, and storytelling. Walker also revived interest in such authors as Phillis Wheatley, an eighteenth-century African American poet, and Zora Neale Hurston, a writer of the Harlem Renaissance. Meanwhile, the acclaimed novelist Toni Morrison helped facilitate the publication of The Black Book (1971), an African American scrapbook containing traditional recipes as well as accounts of historical events.

While many African American authors chose to focus on the era of slavery, some, such as Paule Marshall, delved into other aspects of black culture. As the offspring of immigrant parents from Barbados, Marshall brought a unique perspective to her writings, demonstrating that the effects of the African diaspora could be found not only in America but also in the Caribbean and newly liberated African nations as well. (Of the 10 to 15 million slaves imported to the so-called New World, some 2 million had been shunted to the Caribbean, a very considerable number whose experience formed a significant part of the whole.) In Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow, Avey Johnson discovers in the course of her travels to Grenada and Carriacou just how much of a stranger she has become to her own heritage and roots.

Emergence of a black middle class

In the 1900s, large numbers of African Americans migrated from the rural South to the urban North, with ramifications that would be felt throughout the century. While black migrant workers still faced racial discrimination, unemployment, poverty, and inadequate housing in northern cities, they nonetheless had more opportunities there than in the South. This was especially true in the decades surrounding the two world wars. Increased industrialization and enlistments of soldiers led to job openings and economic opportunities for black workers at home. Then, after the wars, black veterans, who had served their country with distinction, felt less inclined to accept second-class citizenship back home in America and did what they could to improve their status.

Between the 1940s and 1980s, an increasingly populous black middle class began to emerge, its members making advances in a wide spectrum of professions. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s opened the door even wider for African American advancement. The 1954 ruling of Brown v. Board of Education outlawed racial segregation in schools, while the Civil

THE IMPORTANCE OF NAMES

In Praisesong for the Widow, names as well as tribes also carry great significance. Avey’s full first name is “Avatara,” derived from the word “avatar”—an incarnation of a spirit on earth; moreover, Avey shares that name with her late grandmother, a woman many considered insane. Avey’s great-aunt Cuney believed that this first Avatara was a visionary and insisted that Avey always give her full name when introducing herself to others. Other names—and their usage—also prove important in the novel. Avey’s husband was named jerome Johnson, but during the happy early years of their marriage, Avey calls him by the more casual “Jay.” As Jay becomes increasingly driven to achieve middle-class status and security, Avey finds herself thinking of her husband as “Jerome” instead and mourns the loss of “Jay.” Place names prove similarly significant: “North White Plains,” the suburb to which the Johnsons eventually move, suggests their achievement of middle-class affluence and their increased estrangement from their black heritage. Similarly, the cruise ship from which Avey flees in confusion is named “Bianca Pride,” “Bianca” being an Italian name meaning “white.” The name of Lebert Joseph, who guides Avey on her spiritual journey, is also significant. His first name, Lebert, recalls the African trickster figure“Legba,” while his Hebrew surname “Joseph” means “God will increase.” However, Joseph’s name is less important than his fully defined sense of self. He is as connecled to his roots as Avey is alienated from hers; he recognizes his name’s familial significance when he declares “I’s a Joseph, out!, . From Ti Morne, Carriacou. The oldest one still living from that part of the island if you please” (Pruisesong for the Widow, p. 163). He also knows his nation, announcing, “I’s a Chamba! From my father’s side of the family. They was all Chambas. My mother now was a Manding and when they dance her nation I does a turn or two out in the ring so she won’t feel I’m slighting her. But I must salute the Chambas first” (Prahesong for the Widow, p. 166). joseph’s knowledge of and pride in his cultural identily ultimately inspire Avey to reclaim her own, starting with her remembering that her given name is “Avatara.”

Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination based on a person’s race, color, religion, national origin, or sex in public facilities. Such reforms paved the way for African American students to enroll in historically white universities such as Harvard, Cornell, and Princeton. Greater numbers of blacks also entered the white business world, where many scaled the corporate ladder to achieve executive status. Inevitably, however, the division between middle-class professional blacks and working-class blacks widened, especially as the former separated themselves physically by moving to more affluent communities and by attending different schools and churches.

In Praisesong for the Widow, the initially working-class Avey and Jay Johnson strive for upward mobility, like many of their contemporaries. A domestic quarrel brought on by economic hardships, overwork, and an unplanned pregnancy nearly wrecks the Johnsons’ marriage, but then Jay pushes himself relentlessly to attain material success. After establishing his own accounting business, he can afford to move his family into a larger house in the suburbs of North White Plains, New York. Their success does not receive unqualified applause, however. The novel depicts the Johnsons’ rise to the top ambivalently; even as Avey and Jay achieve social position and financial security, they forfeit something of equal or greater importance: their intimacy as a couple and their connection with their African heritage. Jay, in particular, becomes alienated from his roots in Harlem and his sense of himself as an African American. Ultimately even Avey can no longer recognize the man she loves in the remade Jerome Johnson who “viewed the world and his fellow man according to a harsh and joyless ethic” (Praisesong for the Widow, p. 131).

The Novel in Focus

The plot

The novel begins as Avey Johnson, an affluent African American widow in her sixties, suddenly decides to leave a Caribbean cruise—her third in as many years—after only five days and return home. Avey’s decision astounds her two traveling companions (also middle-aged black women), all the more so because Avey herself cannot explain it. During the last several days of the cruise, Avey has suffered from an odd sensation of bloating in her stomach; more disturbingly, she has begun to dream, which she has not done since 1963.

In her most recent dream, Avey encountered her great-aunt Cuney, who used to take the young Avey to a special place in Tatem, South Carolina, where slave ships carrying Ibos landed. According to Aunt Cuney, the Ibos turned around and walked all the way back across the sea to Africa without sinking or drowning, a story that fascinated Avey as a child. In the dream, however, the adult Avey, in mink stole and high heels, resists her aunt’s attempts to take her to Ibo Landing. The two women come to blows; so violent and real does their struggle seem that Avey’s wrists are sore when she awakens from the dream.

Disembarking from the cruise ship in Grenada, Avey goes ashore and becomes increasingly disoriented when she finds herself among a crowd of islanders who do not seem to speak English. A taxi driver comes to her aid and escorts her to a lavish hotel. On the drive, he explains that the people Avey saw on the wharf were “out-islanders” from Carriacou, preparing to go home on an annual excursion that lasts two or three days. The taxi driver, however, does not understand the appeal of the excursion, on which he has never gone, although he once dated a girl from Carriacou.

Arriving at the hotel, Avey has the clerk make reservations for her on a plane leaving for New York the next day, then checks into her room. Once alone, doubts assail her as to whether she made the right decision by cutting her trip short. She cannot even take refuge in imagining the comforts of her home in North White Plains, New York. Falling into an uneasy slumber, Avey dreams again—this time of her late husband, Jerome Johnson, who berates her for forfeiting $1,500 dollars by leaving the ship.

The second dream stirs up poignant memories of Avey’s past life and the early years of her marriage. She and Jerome—then called Jay—had been a struggling young married couple, living in Brooklyn on Halsey Street. Avey was employed by the state motor vehicle department, while Jay had worked long hours at a department store as a warehouse clerk who also handled the shipping and receiving. Hardworking, efficient, and conscientious, Jay was a model employee, but he did not receive all the credit or money due him because he was black. Nonetheless, the Johnsons had a happy, affectionate marriage, complete with shared rituals like dancing to Jay’s phonograph records at night, eating coffee cake together on Sunday mornings, and taking summer trips to Tatem to see Ibo Landing.

Everything changes after Avey unexpectedly becomes pregnant for the third time. Worried about finances and the burden of caring for another child, Avey tries without success to terminate her pregnancy. Jay becomes increasingly distant after hearing about the pregnancy and his wife’s self-abortion attempts; he begins to work longer hours at the department store. Tensions escalate as Avey’s pregnancy advances, coming to a head in the winter of 1945. Worn out by caring for two ailing daughters in a house that lacks sufficient heat, Avey lashes out at her husband one night on his return from work, accusing him of having affairs with the store’s white shopgirls. During the ensuing quarrel, Jay shouts at his wife “Do you know who you sound like, who you even look like … ?” He alludes here to a shrewish neighbor who continually fights with a husband whom she must fetch home from bars every Friday night.

Jay’s question ultimately haunts the Johnsons for the rest of their life together. From that point on, Jay becomes obsessed with achieving material success and escaping from Halsey Street. He takes a second job as a door-to-door salesman, enrolls in night school and correspondence courses, and eventually builds a small accounting business that enables the Johnsons to move to a house in the more upscale North White Plains. But the passion and joy has gone out of the Johnsons’ marriage. They abandon the rituals they shared, almost becoming strangers to each other. Avey begins thinking of her husband as “Jerome” rather than “Jay,” a sign that he is not quite the same person he was before. Remembering his funeral four years ago, Avey suddenly realizes she did not weep then because the husband she loved had disappeared long before Jerome Johnson’s death. Now, in Grenada, she weeps for what she and Jay lost when they began their upward climb.

The next morning, after breakfasting and changing her clothes, Avey wanders aimlessly on the beach. Losing her bearings, she finds herself in a deserted part of the island, where the only building visible is a small bar, or rum shop. Ducking into the shop for a brief rest, a disoriented Avey meets the proprietor, an elderly, crippled man named Lebert Joseph. Although both are initially wary and testy, they begin a conversation. Avey learns that Joseph is an out-islander preparing to depart for the Carriacou excursion and very proud of his African heritage—its songs, prayers, dances, and history—which he wishes to impart to all his descendants, even those whom he has not yet seen. Avey, in turn, finds herself confiding all her troubles and misgivings, including her strange dreams, to the old man. On hearing her out, Lebert Joseph identifies her problem as being unable to identify her heritage: “[Grenada] have quite a few like you. People who can’t call their nation. For one reason or another they just don’t know. Is a hard thing… You ask people in this place what nation they is and they look at you like you’s a madman. No, you’s not the only one” (Praisesong for the Widow, pp. 174–75). Joseph then invites Avey to accompany him on the excursion, suggesting that it might do her good. Ultimately Avey accepts the invitation, reschedules her flight to New York, and boards ship with the other out-islanders that afternoon.

During the passage, Avey’s sense of malaise returns; in scenes reminiscent of a ritual purging, she suffers from vomiting and loose bowels. Her fellow passengers minister to her needs and escort her to the deckhouse midship so she can recover and rest in solitude. Lying alone in the darkness, Avey has the strange impression of “other bodies lying crowded in with her in the hot airless dark. … Their suffering—the depth of it, the weight of it in the cramped space—made hers of no consequence” (Praisesong for the Widow, p. 209).

Later, Avey awakens in the house of Rosalie Parvay, Lebert Joseph’s daughter, on Carriacou. The kindness of Rosalie and the other female elders soothes away Avey’s lingering embarrassment. Their touch also proves healing as they bathe, oil, and massage their reluctant guest. Now recovered from her difficult journey, Avey joins the islanders on their yearly rituals.

At night all the Carriacou pilgrims gather at a meetinghouse at the top of a hill, where they pray, sing, and finally perform the ritual dances from their individual African nations. Avey watches with interest but does not take part until the all-inclusive Carriacou Tramp begins. Recognizing the dance as the Ring Shout, which she saw performed in Tatem years before, Avey joins in, slowly at first, then with a growing confidence and sense of belonging. The other dancers bow to her, and one elderly woman takes Avey’s hand and introduces herself. Avey returns the courtesy, remembering that Aunt Cuney had always instructed her to give her name as “Avey, short for Avatara” (Praisesong for the Widow, p. 251).

The following morning, Avey bids an affectionate farewell to Lebert Joseph and his daughter before flying back to Grenada. Healed in body and spirit, her cultural identity restored, Avey resolves to make major changes in her life once she returns to New York and to enlist the help of her youngest, most politically active daughter, Marion in carrying them out: she will sell the house in White Plains, rebuild Aunt Cuney’s house in Tatem as a summer residence, and pass on to her grandchildren the stories, traditions, and history of their African heritage.

Ancestors and descendants

The need to reconnect with and embrace one’s past is a major theme of Praisesong for the Widow. Even the surface of the novel illustrates that need, by portraying generational conflicts between ancestors and descendants. Throughout the first part of the novel, Avey is haunted by memories and dreams of her great-aunt Cuney, the domineering woman who named her and instructed her in all the family history and legends. In her most recent dream, the old woman tries to drag her back to the places they had gone when Avey was a child, while the adult Avey, clad in all the finery of a well-heeled suburban lifestyle, strenuously resists. The dream ends as the two women engage in a furious brawl, but in the morning, Avey can still feel “the pressure of the old woman’s iron grip” on her wrist (Praisesong for the Widow, p. 47).

Although Avey herself tries to dismiss the dream, she is unable to do so, finally relating it to Lebert Joseph, the elderly Carriacouan proprietor of a rum shop in Grenada. Initially hostile towards this African American tourist, Joseph becomes “all-understanding, all-compassion” once he learns of her troubles (Praisesong for the Widow, p. 172). From that point on, he is also more determined than ever to persuade her to accompany him to Carriacou, possibly because he recognizes the source of her distress: her estrangement from her past, her heritage, and her ancestors.

Avey’s dream visitation by her great-aunt has an established historical and cultural precedent. As noted, in the Caribbean and in certain parts of the United States, Africans’ reverence for their ancestors survives in various rituals, both religious and secular. Many West Indians believe that to neglect those rituals—leaving food or other offerings for the deceased, for example-is to incur their ancestors’ displeasure and risk misfortune, illness, and even death.

Dreams in which ancestors appeared to their descendants were also taken quite seriously, as the principal means by which the dead contacted the living. In his anthropological study of Carriacouan society, Donald R. Hill classified these “dream messages” from Old Parents (ancestors) to descendants as falling into five sometimes overlapping categories: 1) disturbances by a recently departed spouse or parent; 2) advice for personal, often health-related problems; 3) sooth-saying; 4) requests for a ceremony to be performed; 5) a response to a malevolent action that is to be taken

THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

In Prarsesong for the Widow, Avey Johnson becomes violently ill during the crossing from Grenada to Carriacou. an occurrence that recalls the sufferings of African slaves undergoing transport from Africa to the Americas on what became known as “the middle passage.” Most slave ships sailed due west, nearing the Ascension Islands, then turning north towards the West Indies, Martinique, or Barbados. The passage could take from six weeks to half a year, depending on the severity and frequency of tropical storms near the equator. Regardless of the duration, the slaves suffered horribly; considered cargo rather than passengers, they were generally held in shackles below decks and packed together like sardines. Captains of slave ships stowed an average of 300 slaves in the cargo hold, allotting them only half the space afforded convicts, emigrants, and soldiers. In such close quarters, the spread of communicable diseases, including smallpox and measles, was inevitable, while anemic dysentery, scurvy, and malnutrition were ever-present threats. As many as 8 million Africans may have perished while undergoing the middle passage during the slavery era (Rogozinski, p. 128). In the novel, Avey, lying down in the deckhouse to recover from her illness, experiences what might be described as a psychic echo of her ancestors’ sufferings on the middle passage: the cramped quarters, filth, and stench. The knowledge of what they endured makes her own discomfort easier to bear.

or has already been taken. Avey’s own dream-message from her great-aunt Cuney seems to be both a disturbance and a request, an attempt to jolt Avey from her complacent but stifling middle-class existence and an entreaty for Avey to reclaim the rituals she was taught as a child and take up her place as her great-aunt’s spiritual heir. Initially resistant to the idea, Avey embraces her past and her mission after her pilgrimage to Carriacou, resolving to fulfill her duty to her people and her ancestors.

Sources and literary context

Marshall’s earliest literary models included Charles Dickens, Thomas Mann, and Joseph Conrad, from whom she derived her sense of character development, especially in relation to culture and setting. Later, she read the works of African American writers Paul Laurence Dunbar, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin. Like many of her female contemporaries, Marshall did not encounter the writings of other black women writers until the 1960s; among those, however, she admired Zora Neale Hurston, Dorothy West, and, especially, Gwendolyn Brooks, whom she cited as having a strong influence on her own work.

BLACK FEMINISM

Although African American women played key roles in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, many felt that their own needs were being subordinated to those of black men. During the 1970s, however, black women came into their own, founding several organizations intended to address their particular issues and aspirations. The most important of these groups was the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO). which was established in 1973. One of the NBFO’s founders, Margaret Sloan, declared, as a rallying cry for new members, that “there can’t be liberation for halt a race” (Sloan in Franklin and Moss, p. 556). Paule Marshall’s emphasis on black women in her novels corresponds to an increasingly vocal black feminism of the times.

Marshall also drew upon her personal experiences as a child growing up in an immigrant community and upon her personal experiences as a globetrotting journalist. Her travels to the Caribbean and South America fueled the plots of several of her works, including Praisesong for the Widow. Perhaps the most striking aspect of Marshall’s work is her emphasis on the lives and experiences of black women. This focus, in her early writings, was considered ahead of its time, since most of the attention was long riveted on black urban males in relation to both cultural nationalism and African American literature. Marshall addressed what she felt to be a necessary and much-neglected perspective. In an interview, she explained that she wanted “to make women—especially black women—important characters in [my] stories. … To make up for the neglect, the disregard, the distortions, and untruths, [I] wanted them to be center-stage” (Marshall in Alexander, p. 196).

Reviews

Praisesong for the Widow received mostly positive reviews on its publication in 1983. Darryl Pinckney, writing for the New York Review of Boohs, complained that the novel lacked substance but conceded that “the attraction of [Marshall’s] work lies in a deep saturation in the consciousness of her characters and the ability to evoke the urban or tropical settings in which they toil” (Pinckney in Stine, p. 315).

Other reviewers were more enthusiastic. In Booklist, William Bradley Hooper called Praisesong for the Widow “uncomplicated but resonant,” adding “There is no limit to the kind of readership to which this novel will appeal; with deft exploration of character, Marshall speaks to anyone interested in thoughtful fiction” (Hooper in Stine, p. 314). Novelist Anne Tyler, writing for the New York Times Book Review, noted an improvement over Marshall’s previous writings, calling Praisesong for the Widow “a firmer book, obviously the product of a more experienced writer. It lacks the soft spots of the earlier work. From the first paragraph, it moves purposefully and knowledgeably towards its final realization” (Tyler in Stine, p. 315). Tyler was especially taken with the protagonist’s vivid memories of her past and evocations of her young husband. Avey’s “wistful journey to her younger self,” struck Tyler as both “universal” and “astonishingly moving” (Tyler in Stine, p. 315).

—Pamela S. Loy

For More Information

Alexander, Simone A. James. Mother Imagery in the Novels of Afro-Caribbean Women. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.

Crawford, Vicki L, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods, eds. Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941–1965. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1993.

DeLamotte, Eugenia C Places of Silence, Journeys of Freedom. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred A. Moss, Jr. FromSlavery to Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and Nellie Y. McKay, eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.

Hill, Donald R. The Impact of Migration on the Metropolitan and Folk Society of Carriacou, Grenada. New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1977.

Marshall, Paule. Praisesong for the Widow. New York: Plume, 1983.

Meditz, Sandra W., and Dennis M. Hanratty, eds. Islands of the Commonwealth Caribbean: A Regional Study. Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division, 1989.

Pettis, Joyce. Toward Wholeness in Paule Marshall’s Fiction. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995.

Rogozinski, Jan. A Brief History of the Caribbean. New York: Meridian, 1994.

Stine, Jean C., ed. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 27. Detroit: Gale Research, 1984.