{"id":359,"date":"2014-06-11T00:23:16","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T00:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/?p=359"},"modified":"2017-05-25T05:06:08","modified_gmt":"2017-05-25T05:06:08","slug":"marshall-paule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/2014\/06\/11\/marshall-paule\/","title":{"rendered":"Marshall, Paule"},"content":{"rendered":"

Biography<\/h3>\n
\"Image<\/a>
Image by Geoffrey Philip\/CC licensed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1929, Paule Marshall was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn, New York. She visited Barbados, her parents\u2019 birthplace, for the first time at the age of nine. Marshall graduated from Brooklyn College in 1953 and graduate school at Hunter College in 1955. Early in her life, Marshall wrote a series of poems reflecting impressions of Barbados. Later, she turned to fiction. She has published short stories and articles in various magazines. She is best known for her novels <\/a>and collections of short stories:\u00a0Brown Girl, Brownstones<\/em>\u00a0(1959),\u00a0Soul Clap Hands and Sing<\/em>\u00a0(1961),\u00a0The Chosen Place, the Timeless People<\/em>\u00a0(1969),\u00a0Praisesong for the Widow<\/em>\u00a0(1983),\u00a0Reena and Other Short Stories<\/em>\u00a0(1983), and\u00a0Daughters\u00a0<\/em>(1991). Marshall has lectured on black literature at universities and colleges such as Oxford University, Columbia University, Michigan State University, and Cornell University. She holds a distinguished chair in creative writing at New York University.<\/p>\n

Works & Themes<\/h3>\n
\n
\"Brown<\/a>
Brown Girl, Brownstones, 1959<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0Brown Girl, Brownstones<\/em>, Marshall\u2019s first novel, tells the story of Selina Boyce, a girl growing up in a small black immigrant community. Selina is caught between her\u00a0mother, who wants to conform to \u00a0the ideals of her new home and make the American dream come true, and her father, who longs to go back to Barbados. The dominant themes in the novel \u2013 travel, migration, psychic fracture and \u00a0striving for wholeness \u2013 are important structuring elements in her later works as well. (See Mimicry, Ambivalence and Hybridity<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u00a0Soul Clap Hands and Sing<\/em>, whose title is taken from Yeats\u2019s \u201cSailing to Byzantium,\u201d is comprised of \u00a0four novellas, each taking place in different locations but depicting an aging man of African descent. \u00a0Hardened by their compliance to the Western ideal to accumulate wealth, these men feel the need to develop meaningful human relationships and reach out to young women. Still caught up in their selfish motives, these men must\u00a0face their individual failures for having waited too long as well as the tragedy of loneliness. While, as Joyce Pettis points out, \u201cwomen\u2019s capacity for renewal is not elaborately articulated in this early work, the recognition is crucial, for it foreshadows their potential for exhaustive developments in later texts,\u201d such as\u00a0The Chosen Place<\/em>,\u00a0the Timeless People<\/em>, and\u00a0Daughters\u00a0<\/em>(15). In these works, childbearing stands for the hope to heal the West Indian psyche of the fractures it has suffered from the traumatic experience of the colonial past and white supremacy (See Frantz Fanon<\/a>, Colonial Education<\/a>, Gender and Nation<\/a>). Conversely, the inability to conceive and the unwillingness to bear children will be a symbol of the inability to remedy those fractures.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0The Chosen Place, the Timeless People,\u00a0<\/em>Marshall brings these ideas\u00a0together in the character of Merle Kimbona, daughter of one of the last sugar cane plantation owners and a servant. As an educated woman who lived in England but returned to her homeland, the fictitious island of Bourne located in the West Indies, Merle stands as a symbol for the troubled consciousness of the West Indian psyche. Having been seduced and abused by the perverted ideals of British white supremacy epitomized in the character of an upper class English lady, which ultimately leads to the end of her marriage with her African husband, Merle is left alone with her shame and the conviction that she has lost her quest for her true identity. Thus it is a bitter and cynical Merle who meets the novel\u2019s other main character, Jewish American anthropologist Saul Amron, coming to Bournehills to conduct a preliminary survey that aims to better the life of the inhabitants in a way that takes their culture into account. The subdued romantic affair between Merle and Saul results in the cancellation of Saul\u2019s project, the suicide of his wife, and Merle\u2019s decision to move to Africa to find her husband and daughter. Simple oppositions, deployed in an ideologically burdened manner (e.g. the one between a problematic America and an unproblematic Africa or the one between \u201cperverted,\u201d futile female homosexuality <\/a>and Merle\u2019s ability to conceive a child with her African husband) point to a problematic idealism in the novel\u2019s message. Nevertheless, Marshall\u2019s extraordinary talent in depicting complex, intriguing characters undermines this idealism and creates a brilliant epic of the West Indian condition.<\/p>\n

Reena and Other Stories<\/em>\u00a0is a collection of Marshall\u2019s short fiction but it also contains the important essay \u201cThe Making of a Writer: From the Poets in the Kitchen.\u201d In this piece, Marshall expresses her gratitude to her mother and other Barbadian women for having taught her the power of the word as an instrument of communication as well as survival.<\/p>\n

Praisesong for the Widow<\/em>\u00a0is in many ways the closing point of Marshall\u2019s explorations concerning the fractured West Indian psyche. The main characters, Avatara and Jerome Johnson evoke Silla and Deighton Boyce, the parents of Selina in\u00a0Brown Girl, Brownstones<\/em>. Similar to the couple in the earlier novel, Avatara and Jerome are caught up in pursuing capitalist comforts. Like Silla, Jerome dies without ever realizing that there may be a different way of survival. Unlike Silla, Avatara discovers a possibility to reconnect with the cultures of African descent when traveling to a Caribbean island (See Paul Gilroy: The Black Atlantic<\/a>). Here, the remains of African cultures are preserved in legends, dances, myths, and rituals. The novel suggests that, in Pettis\u2019s words, \u201cthe divisiveness of Eurocentric cosmology can be countered through sensitivity to and acceptance of one\u2019s cultural origins. The result is a self that is whole and moored\u201d (16-17).<\/p>\n

\n
\"Daughters,<\/a>
Daughters, 1991<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

In\u00a0Daughters<\/em>, Marshall is no longer invested in depicting such cultural and psychic reintegration although the familiar motives of travel and the symbolic significance of childbearing reappear. The heroine, Ursa McKenzie, daughter of an African American woman and a native politician of a fictitious Caribbean island, Triunion, lives in Brooklyn. The conflicts in her life are structured by the social implications of racism and gendered relations. The idealism of the earlier novels only appear in Ursa\u2019s long planned thesis topic: the demonstration of egalitarian gender roles of the people of African descent under slavery. The Triunian legend of slave freedom fighters and lovers Congo Jane and Will Codjoe portrays an equal relationship unmatched by any of the couples in the novel. While Ursa chooses not to bear children and her friend Viney is willing to be a mother only through artificial insemination and chooses to stay celibate, these motives no longer suggest the denial to discover and accept one\u2019s cultural heritage. Ursa is quite capable of leading a productive, if not utterly satisfactory, life in New York; the source of her main conflict is her relationship with her father, the politician who has lost his initial zeal to help his people and has become a puppet in the hands of imperialist businessmen. (See African American Studies and Postcolonialism<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The recurring themes of travel, psychic reintegration, and gender relations<\/a> in a patriarchal, postcolonial, capitalist<\/a>, and white supremacist world render Marshall\u2019s oeuvre a consistent body of writings exploring the possibilities and stakes of claiming a culture of African origin. As Dorothy L. Denniston writes, \u201cMarshall offers no easy solutions in her fiction, but she does suggest models for change and possibility. Because she develops those possibilities through the characterization of black women, she celebrates female agency and empowerment. Indeed, black women become representative of the larger black struggle for individual autonomy and communal wholeness\u201d (88).<\/p>\n

Awards<\/h3>\n

Rosenthal Award for the National Institute of Arts and Letters for\u00a0Soul Clap Hands and Sing<\/em>\u00a0(1961)
\nBefore Columbus Foundation American Book Award for\u00a0Praisesong for the Widow<\/em>\u00a0(1984)
\nJohn Dos Pasos Award for Literature (1989)
\nMacArthur Fellowship (1992)<\/p>\n

Publications<\/h3>\n

Marshall, Paule.\u00a0Brown Girl, Brownstones.\u00a0<\/em>New York: Feminist Press at CUNY,\u00a01959.
\n\u2014. Soul Clap Hands and Sing.\u00a0<\/em>Washington, DC: Howard University Press,\u00a01961.
\n\u2014.\u00a0The Chosen Place, the Timeless People.\u00a0<\/em>New York: Vintage,\u00a01969.
\n\u2014.\u00a0Reena and Other Stories.\u00a0<\/em>New York: Feminist Press at CUNY,\u00a01983.
\n\u2014.\u00a0Praisesong for the Widow.\u00a0<\/em>New York: Plume,\u00a01983.
\n\u2014.\u00a0Daughters.\u00a0<\/em>New York: Plume,\u00a01991.
\n\u2014.\u00a0The Fisher King.\u00a0<\/em>New York: Scribner,\u00a02001.
\n\u2014.\u00a0Triangular Road.\u00a0<\/em>New York: Basica Civitas Books,\u00a02009.<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/h3>\n
    \n
  • Bracks, Lean\u2019tin.\u00a0Writings on Black Women of the Diaspora: History, Language, and Identity<\/em>. New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1998.<\/li>\n
  • Braxton, Joanne M. and Andr\u00e9e Nicola McLaughlin.\u00a0Wild Women in the Whirlwind: Afra-American Culture and The Contemporary Literary Renaissance<\/em>. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990.<\/li>\n
  • Evans, Mari.\u00a0Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation<\/em>.Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press\/Doubleday, 1984.<\/li>\n
  • Pettis, Joyce.\u00a0Toward Wholeness in Paule Marshall\u2019s Fiction<\/em>. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1995.<\/li>\n
  • Pryse, Marjorie, and Hortense J. Spillers.\u00a0Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition<\/em>. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.<\/li>\n
  • Shaw, Harry B.\u00a0Perspectives of Black Popular Culture<\/em>. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Press, 1990.<\/li>\n
  • Willis, Susan.\u00a0Specifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience<\/em>. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    References<\/h4>\n
      \n
    • Christian, Barbara.\u00a0Black Women Novelists: The Development Of A Tradition<\/em>, 1892-1976. Contributions in\u00a0Afro-American and African Studies\u00a0<\/em>52 (1980). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.<\/li>\n
    • Hedgepeth, Chester.\u00a0Twentieth-Century African-American Writers and Artists<\/em>. Chicago: American Library Association, 1991<\/li>\n
    • Kort, Carol.\u00a0A to Z of American Women Writers. Facts on File Library of American History<\/em>. New York: Facts on File, 2000.<\/li>\n
    • Rush, Theressa Gunnels, Carol Fairbanks, and Esther Spring Arata.\u00a0Black American Writers Past And Present: A Biographical And BibliographicalDictionary<\/em>. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1975.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      Interviews<\/h4>\n
        \n
      • Dance, Daryl Cumber, \u201cAn Interview with Paule Marshall.\u201d\u00a0The Southern Review\u00a0<\/em>28 (Winter 1992).<\/li>\n
      • Pettis, Joyce, \u201cA MELUS Interview: Paule Marshall.\u201d\u00a0MELUS\u00a0<\/em>17 (Winter 1991\/2).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        Author: Eszter Timar, Spring 2000
        \nLast edited:\u00a0May 2017<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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