![]() ![]() ![]() Avey represents the diasporic subject who must be reunited with a culture she has trained herself to deny, and this culture is not limited by geography. Her past, present and future converge on her at once and, through the ritual dance that forms the novel’s climax, Marshall portrays Avey’s, and by extension all diasporic peoples’ spiritual healing, and the reclamation of our cultural and historic identity from the debilitating effects of slavery, colonialism and “Western” materialism. Ostensibly, Praisesong is a story of a woman past middle age “rediscovering herself” against the backdrop of an exotic Caribbean tourist imaginary, but Avey comes to an understanding not only of herself but of the people around her, both in present-day Carriacou and in the memories of her childhood and earlier adult life. ![]() Having experienced physical and psychological unease even before this trip she finds that, in attempting to return “home” to her comfortable life in New York, she discovers a new home, that within the transatlantic African diaspora. Praisesong for the Widow (1984) tells the story of African-American Avey Johnson’s arrival in Grenada, having abandoned an opulent Caribbean cruise, and her sudden encounter with the local “excursion” on nearby Carriacou. ![]()
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