You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
There’s something very warm and comforting about Paule’s writing. I could curl up and read her words endlessly. This novel takes us back to an older New York, among a close-knit and driven community of Barbadian immigrants, within an intimate coming-of-age story that inherently tugs on the heart. Selina is my new favorite character, and I so wish I knew where she is now.
What a complex story. Each character was written in a way that you adored them and hated them within the page. The dynamics of Selina’s parents, her friendships, and relationships really strike you. Paule Marshall writes eloquently describing exactly what Brooklyn was like during that time. Much of what she shares makes you think about how the shaping of Brooklyn in the 30s-60s changed so much and continues to change.
The end made me want to know more- what happens next in her life?
The end made me want to know more- what happens next in her life?
Actually 4.5. This book was a slow start for me but as time went on I liked it more and more. I think that it will be one of those books that I keep going back to think about.
I had to read some of this book outloud to hear the phonetically spelled words of the West Indian dialect. I struggled through some of the deeper issues of race and family and I am so glad I did.
Reread, August 2025. Some spoilers follow:
When I first read this, in 2020, I thought of it as a Barbadian version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith’s classic coming-of-age tale. Really, though, this is about reaching the point of your youth where you realise you have to strike out alone. It covers the life of Selina Boyce from about ten to eighteen, growing up in Brooklyn with Barbadian parents: Silla, a relentless worker driven by a desire for money, power and prestige, and Deighton, a profligate dreamer. There’s also Selina’s older sister Ina, who dutifully attends church and buys into the aspirational values of the Barbadian immigrant community. (I wonder if it matters that her name is half of Selina’s, as Ina is portrayed as only half a person.) The book has five sections, but there are only two real parts to the book. The first part is entirely about the tussle between Silla and Deighton for supremacy within the family: Deighton has received an inheritance of land “back home” and doesn’t want to sell it, while Silla sees it as a resource to be turned into cash so that they can follow the path prescribed by the local Barbadian Business Association and buy up the building where they live, accruing wealth by becoming slumlords. The differences in their material approach to life reflect deeper spiritual incompatibilities, and Selina is caught pitilessly between them. Deighton is attuned to pleasure and beauty—he teaches Selina how to love the world—but his betrayal by Silla, and his counter-betrayal of squandering the money she gains by it, break his already-flighty mind. Ultimately, the community is disgusted by him, and Silla has him deported. His death, probably a suicide, by falling from the repatriation ship, rounds off the book’s first half.
After that, the tussle is between Silla and Selina. Although Selina adores Deighton and generally chooses to align herself with him, this is really a book about a mother-daughter relationship. The two of them are surprisingly alike: in strength of will, in stubbornness, in the capacity to play a long, slow game of deception. They’re pitted against each other not in sexual competition but by petty-bourgeois standards. In a pivotal scene, Silla articulates a quasi-Randian view of life: everyone has to fight for power, and if you win the fight you’re entitled to what you can get, no matter how you did it. Selina, by contrast, doesn’t know exactly what she wants, but she knows it’s not that. Her lover, Clive, asks her, “What do you do that you like?” At first she has no answer, but her college performance in a modern dance troupe—and the promise of a job as a cruise ship dancer near the novel’s end—suggest that her deepest calling is going to be art, and that she’s going to be a successful artist because, unlike Clive, she has the moral courage to commit to it. Marshall was one of the first American authors to write about the interiorities and artistic journeys of Black women in this way, and she doesn't just create binary options; Selina's other models of Black womanhood, the promiscuously joyful Suggie and the salon owner Miss Thompson—who is, crucially, African-American, not West Indian—offer hidden paths to dignity and integrity that Silla's Darwinian attitude can't recognise. Deeply thought-provoking and intensely readable. Source: reread, old personal copy, originally bought secondhand (from sale paperback shelves) from The Second Shelf
First read, April 2020:
This reminded me so strongly of Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, centering as it does on young Selina Boyce, the daughter of Barbadian immigrants in New York, and her attempts to break free of the familial and societal expectations that bind and devalue her. It’s a huge shame that it’s now out of print; my copy is an old Virago edition. Bring it back, Virago!
When I first read this, in 2020, I thought of it as a Barbadian version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith’s classic coming-of-age tale. Really, though, this is about reaching the point of your youth where you realise you have to strike out alone. It covers the life of Selina Boyce from about ten to eighteen, growing up in Brooklyn with Barbadian parents: Silla, a relentless worker driven by a desire for money, power and prestige, and Deighton, a profligate dreamer. There’s also Selina’s older sister Ina, who dutifully attends church and buys into the aspirational values of the Barbadian immigrant community. (I wonder if it matters that her name is half of Selina’s, as Ina is portrayed as only half a person.) The book has five sections, but there are only two real parts to the book. The first part is entirely about the tussle between Silla and Deighton for supremacy within the family: Deighton has received an inheritance of land “back home” and doesn’t want to sell it, while Silla sees it as a resource to be turned into cash so that they can follow the path prescribed by the local Barbadian Business Association and buy up the building where they live, accruing wealth by becoming slumlords. The differences in their material approach to life reflect deeper spiritual incompatibilities, and Selina is caught pitilessly between them. Deighton is attuned to pleasure and beauty—he teaches Selina how to love the world—but his betrayal by Silla, and his counter-betrayal of squandering the money she gains by it, break his already-flighty mind. Ultimately, the community is disgusted by him, and Silla has him deported. His death, probably a suicide, by falling from the repatriation ship, rounds off the book’s first half.
After that, the tussle is between Silla and Selina. Although Selina adores Deighton and generally chooses to align herself with him, this is really a book about a mother-daughter relationship. The two of them are surprisingly alike: in strength of will, in stubbornness, in the capacity to play a long, slow game of deception. They’re pitted against each other not in sexual competition but by petty-bourgeois standards. In a pivotal scene, Silla articulates a quasi-Randian view of life: everyone has to fight for power, and if you win the fight you’re entitled to what you can get, no matter how you did it. Selina, by contrast, doesn’t know exactly what she wants, but she knows it’s not that. Her lover, Clive, asks her, “What do you do that you like?” At first she has no answer, but her college performance in a modern dance troupe—and the promise of a job as a cruise ship dancer near the novel’s end—suggest that her deepest calling is going to be art, and that she’s going to be a successful artist because, unlike Clive, she has the moral courage to commit to it. Marshall was one of the first American authors to write about the interiorities and artistic journeys of Black women in this way, and she doesn't just create binary options; Selina's other models of Black womanhood, the promiscuously joyful Suggie and the salon owner Miss Thompson—who is, crucially, African-American, not West Indian—offer hidden paths to dignity and integrity that Silla's Darwinian attitude can't recognise. Deeply thought-provoking and intensely readable. Source: reread, old personal copy, originally bought secondhand (from sale paperback shelves) from The Second Shelf
First read, April 2020:
This reminded me so strongly of Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, centering as it does on young Selina Boyce, the daughter of Barbadian immigrants in New York, and her attempts to break free of the familial and societal expectations that bind and devalue her. It’s a huge shame that it’s now out of print; my copy is an old Virago edition. Bring it back, Virago!
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes