Praisesong for the Widow

Author: Paule Marshall
ISBN: 9780452267114

This is a novel full of music and dancing; it describes the sickness that occurs when we disconnect from our heritage and the healing power that comes from reclaiming the music and rhythms of the ancestors. Its hero, Avatar 'Avey' Johnson, was a new character in black literature - an affluent middle-aged black woman, a mother, a grandmother, and a widow. Avey and her late husband worked hard to climb from the slums of Harlem to the comforts of suburban White Plains. But that material comfort brought with it a spiritual disease - a hard-to-diagnose but impossible-to-ignore malaise that eventually erupted into violent illness during a Caribbean vacation.

Publisher: Plume
Publish Date: 1983

Subjects: Fiction / Literary

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Cross-Cultural Center (Location: Literature/Fiction (LITR)), Women's Center (Location: Fiction)