A review by lindseyzank
Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall

4.0

Marshall thoroughly and ingeniously explores the damaging effects of pursuing the capitalist-driven American dream as an African American. The novel follows Avey Johnson in the 1970s as she journeys to the Caribbean aboard a cruise ship only to be overcome by vivid dreams of her great aunt Cuney and her time as a child visiting her on Tatem Island, home to Ibo Landing, where the myth of the flying African (or, in this case, slaves who walked on water back to Africa) and the Ring Shout still persist. Marshall inventively weaves together elements of the African diaspora (Vodou traditions and practices, dances, communal and cultural rituals, and the slave trade) to chart Avey’s journey reconnecting with her African roots. After having denied her Black identity and lineage for years, Avey has become numb, dulled, and she has internalized racist rhetoric and ideology. Her surrogate, though temporary, family in the Caribbean (led by Lebert Joseph, who serves as a Papa Legba figure in Avey's life) affords her the opportunity to reject racist, capitalist paradigms and replace them with richly rendered African and post-slave trade syncretic belief systems that honor the body, the soul, and one’s connection to the ancestors. While Marshall’s writing is not, on a sentence by sentence level, the most lyrical or mesmerizing prose out there, the way she consistently and intelligently comments on the lingering effects of slavery and its racist underpinnings is impressive. She very masterfully navigates between the past and the present, eventually merging Avey's memories with her current experiences as a means to show how her present is determined by her past. The novel ends on a hopeful note, one imbued with African diasporic consciousness and the desire to both preserve and expand it. She’s a voice in African American and Caribbean fiction who isn’t given enough recognition, and more people should read her work.