Toward Wholeness in Paule Marshall's FictionInternationally known and long praised by contemporary African-American novelists, Paule Marshall is now being recognized as a major American writer. Her fiction - Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), Soul Clap Hands and Sing (1961), The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969), Praisesong for the Widow (1983), Reena and Other Stories (1983), and Daughters (1991) - explores the ways in which dual cultural heritages can fracture the psyche of black world communities and black people of African ancestry. This first book-length treatment of Marshall's work is both an examination of her writing and its place in the tradition of African-American women's fiction and a study of black American and Caribbean literature and culture. Joyce Pettis explores the intersecting patterns of race, class, and gender oppressions that exacerbate the problems engendered by the fractured psyche in Marshall's major characters. Pettis identifies the fractured psyche as feelings of incompleteness, vulnerability, alienation, indirection, displacement, diffusion, and spiritual isolation. Among its consequences are disruption of family unity, negative perceptions of oneself in the world community, and an absence of Afrocentric values in a materialist culture. Attempting transcendence of these oppressions gives rise to sustained struggles for wholeness that distinguish Marshall's characters. |
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African cultural African diaspora African-American Afro-Caribbean ancestors Astral Aunt Cuney Avatara Avey Avey's Barbadian Barbados becomes behavior black community black women writers Bournehills British Guiana Brown Girl Brownstones Caliban cane Caribbean carnival Carriacou characters child Chosen Place connection Cuney's Da-Duh dance Daugh Daughters dominant economic Estelle Estelle's example experience feminist fractured psyche gender Hands and Sing Harriet healing heritage identity island Jerome Johnson journey labor literally literary literature lives Lutie Johnson male Mariah Marshall Marshall's fiction Merle Kinbona Merle's metaphorically mother munity myth narrative novel offers oppression Paule Marshall's physical place political Praisesong Primus Primus's protagonist psychic psychically whole psychological space race racial rejection relationship resistance ritual role Selina significant Silla Silla Boyce social Song of Solomon Soul Clap Hands spiritual wholeness story structure sugarcane survival symbol talk texts Third World tion tradition Triunion Ursa Ursa's values Vere Viney Viney's vision Watford West Indian woman