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| Paule Marshall | |
Paule Marshall, "an influential writer whose novels and short stories about ethnic identity, race and colonialism reflected her upbringing in Brooklyn as a daughter of poor immigrants from Barbados," died August 12, the New York Times reported. She was 90. Marshall "created strong female characters, evoked the linguistic rhythms of Barbadian speech, and forged an early link between the African-American and Caribbean literary canons."
Her first book, Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), was "the novel that most black feminist critics consider to be the beginning of contemporary African-American women's writings," Cheryl Wall wrote in The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (2014), adding that it was "the novel that most black feminist critics consider to be the beginning of contemporary African-American women's writings."
In 1961, Marshall earned a Guggenheim Fellowship and published the novella collection Soul Clap Hands and Sing. Her books also include the novels The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969), Praisesong for the Widow (1983), Daughters (1991), The Fisher King (2000) and a memoir, Triangular Road (2009).
"She could see that what was happening to black people in Brooklyn and to black people in Barbados came out of the same structure of capitalism," Mary Helen Washington, Marshall's biographer, told the Washington Post. "I don't think that many black writers at that moment had such a large, transnational view of the world."
"This is a grieving season for Black literature," wrote Imani Perry, a Princeton University professor of African American studies, on Twitter, noting that Marshall's death occurred just a week after Toni Morrison's.
In the New Yorker tribute to Marshall and Morrison, author Edwidge Danticat observed: "I love both women and was blessed to have spent some time in each of their company. Before I ever saw them in the flesh, I was in awe of their words."
Author Jason Reynolds tweeted: "Tell your heroes you love them. Thank you, Ms. Marshall. Rest well. If you don't know her, read, Soul Clap Hands and Sing. Or anything she's written. As a matter of fact, just read Black women, past and present. Period."