Paule Marshall, 1929-2019. Photo Copyright © The Associated Press.
“…Thus, a complex body of work was narrowed down to its racial themes, as though a black artist’s work could be seen and appreciated only if it was presented as clearly and recognizably black….” Nell Painter
READING the hugely interesting review by Nell Painter of a biography of the life of Romare Bearden, an artist of whom I had never heard, I thought of the tributes I had seen to Paule Marshall when she passed August 12 this year. The biography is by Mary Schmidt Campbell, current president of Spellman College, and is called An American Odyssey. I could not help but think how so much of the world needs someone to declare their blackness, if they are black.
It is not that one minds such declaration, but the question is “What is one declaring blackness against?” Is it whiteness? Is it slavery? Is it colonization or is it love? Can one declare one’s (or another’s) blackness against migration or exploitation or happiness or war or infants? Can domestic labour be a place against which one declares blackness? Or can one leave the place of declaration open and simply describe livity?
Because my friend Joy hates presentations that simply pose questions, I suppose I have to say something that is statement and claim. Paule Marshall, a black citizen of the United States of America and born of Barbadian migrant parents, renders life much like Vincent van Gogh does in his work. She imagines people have lives of great beauty and horror and honour and mundanity, and even foolishness, and so renders them. Her work on Brown Girl, Brownstones, which one critic I saw in tribute call Black Girl (what? Black Stones?) can easily be read by most migrants, of colour or colourless (??).
My favourite novel of Marshall’s is The Chosen Place, The Timeless People, loved for its breadth and wildness. Some people play a carnival mas, much like we do with church over and over and over. And each time they may be getting closer to its real meaning. I love the meandering of the stories and her litany of characters in every book. I am amazed to have teachers tell me about THE storyline.
Ah, well. I shall miss Paule Marshall, whatever colour she was. I shall miss her with growing loss of memory like I miss her dear friend, the white Russian Jewish anthropologist Connie Sutton. They were such people.
Margaret D. Gill, published and performance poet following in the footsteps of her mother, who wrote plays and recitations for children's Sunday school concerts. Won her first international award for poetry, Shankar's International Children's Competition in India, at 14. 2007 Visiting Writer to Hong Kong Baptist University and Shandong University, China, as part of their jointly hosted International Writers' Workshop. Inaugural first-prize winner, Frank Collymore Literary Award (FCLA), and 2006 second-prize FCLA winner to Kamau Brathwaite. Latest performance, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Nelson Mandela 100 years birthday celebrations.
