Paule Marshall

A Writer’s Life

AvMary Helen Washington

Inbunden, Engelska, 2026

Del i serien Black Lives

266 kr

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Beskrivning

An elegant biography of a prescient author whose novels portray Black women’s experiences across the African diaspora Growing up in World War II–era Brooklyn among West Indian immigrants, Paule Marshall (1929–2019) was fiercely driven to become a writer, making art from the world she knew, the life she lived, and the world she imagined. Though her novels and stories are understood by scholars as the beginning of contemporary Black feminist literature—bridging Harlem Renaissance writers like Zora Neale Hurston to such writers as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou—Marshall’s legacy is often overlooked. In this elegant literary biography, distinguished scholar of African American literature Mary Helen Washington draws on exclusive access to the writer’s papers, including her newly discovered unpublished memoir, and scores of interviews with family and friends to give us the first account of Marshall’s life as an artist and of the depth and brilliance of her work. Beginning with her 1959 debut, Brown Girl, Brownstones, a coming-of-age story set among Barbadian immigrants and African Americans in Brooklyn, and moving through her later works set in the Caribbean, Africa, and the United States, Marshall’s novels chart the diasporic life that Marshall herself lived, defined by Black women’s experiences, an unapologetic and sometimes queer sexuality, and the history of the African diaspora. Despite the lush and finely observed inner lives of her heroines, however, Marshall was famous for tightly guarding her own privacy, and it is this enigma—Marshall’s deeply expressive writing versus her guarded public exterior—that Washington draws out. Here is the first look at a prescient, brilliantly talented writer, a complex and fascinating woman, whose fiction single-handedly stages a reverse middle passage that extends from the United States and the Caribbean to Africa.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2026-04-07
Mått:140 x 216 x 28 mm
Vikt:454 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Black Lives
Antal sidor:312
Förlag:Yale University Press
ISBN:9780300253856

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Mary Helen Washington is distinguished university professor emerita in the English department at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of the prizewinning The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s. She lives in Silver Spring, MD.

Recensioner i media

“Washington delivers a praisesong for Paule Marshall that provides an unparalleled analysis of her work; one that also lifts the veil on the author’s same-sex longings and liaisons.”—Evelyn C. White, author of Alice Walker: A Life“With skillful truth-telling and meticulous research, Washington brings to life writer Paule Marshall, the ‘iron-willed’ girl and shape-shifting woman who pursued her ambition without compromise. . . . An irreplaceable gift ensuring us that Marshall’s voice will not be lost.”—Maryemma Graham, author The House Where My Soul Lives: The Life of Margaret Walker“Washington’s deep exploration of Paule Marshall’s life and work reveals how foundational she is to postwar American writing. Her journey offers a map to help us navigate the issues of today’s sociopolitical climate.”—Tamara Payne, Pulitzer Prize–winning coauthor of The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X“Through meticulous research, deep reading, and an abundance of understanding, Washington has rendered Marshall’s life with care, revealing her to be a figure as compelling and complicated as her most enduring protagonists.”—Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature