Fiction of Paule Marshall

Paule Marshall's novels move between Brooklyn brownstones, the Caribbean and the wider African diaspora, and Dorothy Hamer Denniston reads them as the work of a single, coherent artistic vision. She begins with what she calls the anatomy of Marshall's aesthetic, tracing its African cultural base, then follows the fiction book by book: Brown Girl, Brownstones as something more than a coming-of-age novel, the masculine subjectivity of Soul Clap Hands and Sing, the personal and political liberation of The Chosen Place, the Timeless People.

Later chapters take in the short stories, the diasporan connections of Praisesong for the Widow and the reshaping of female identity in Daughters, with gender and culture running as threads throughout. This is a clear, close-reading critical study for students and devoted readers of Marshall who want to see how her books speak to one another.