Author Paule Marshall and her book "Praise song for the widow"

Essay by jiho6602High School, 12th gradeA-, March 2007

download word file, 2 pages 4.0

Paule Marshall, the author of “Praise song for the Widow”, was born in Brooklyn, New York City. Marshall was born to African Barbadian parents. Barbados is an island nation located in the east of Caribbean Sea. Marshall went to Brooklyn College in 1953 and Hunter college in 1955. Before she started her career, one of the most famous African Writer and Poet, took Paule on a world tour, where they read each other’s work. The travel was a start for his career as a writer. In the beginning of her career, she mostly wrote poems on Barbados but later but later she came back to the fiction. She has written many short stories and articles in magazines. Marshall also taught black literature at many colleges such as “Oxford University, Columbia University, Michigan State University, and Cornell University”.Praise song for the Widow is very unique and persuasive story.

Paule Marshall has done a good job with her detailed and sensory description of African culture and traditions in Caribbean. In Praise song for the Widow, the protagonist is Avatar (Avey) Johnson, who is a black widow born from New York. Avey feels secure and affluent about her life but she is worried that she totally forgot about her heritage. She is black but has Caribbean Origin. The Caribbean is a region located southeast of North America. It consists of Caribbean Sea and thousands of islands. The islands are known as “Conservation International’s biodiversity hotspots” due to such diverse ecosystems. These ecosystems include “cloud forests to cactus scrublands.” But unfortunately, majority of them were destroyed by deforestation and encroachment. The name "Caribbean" is named after the Caribs, one of the dominant Amerindian groups in the region at the time of European contact during the late 15th century.”West Indies...