Paule Marshall has always been one of my favorite writers since back in the day when I read Brown Girl, Brown Stones. In her new book, Triangular Road: A Memoir, her loyal fans are given a treat in this part memoir and family history, part travelogue, part writing process, and part history of the Black Diaspora. In 1965, the esteemed Langston Hughes of Harlem Renaissance fame, invited Marshall to be part of a two-month European tour to discuss Black-American literature as part of a teaching and lecture series at European universities. At the time she had one novel and a collection of short stories published and felt honored to be in the presence of Mr. Hughes. Always the political activist, the lectures often turned to the plight of the Black Americans. She fell in love with Paris that sparked a love of travel.

Daughter of Barbadian immigrants, she grew up in an insular community of immigrants from Barbados in Brooklyn, New York. Marshall, at age thirteen changed her middle name, Pauline, which was the name that she was known as, to Paule, pronounced as Paul for Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Her world was even separated from other West Indians; they all had a pecking order of status and class. While her mother embraced all things Bajan and took Marshall and her sister back to visit her mother in her homeland, her father wanted nothing to do with Barbados. An illegal alien, he would not even speak of his family or where he lived; he was just glad to be gone from what he called that” two by four” island. Working a series of factory jobs which he felt were beneath him and his cheap suits, he soon took up with the Father Divine movement and abandoned the family when Marshall was eleven years-old. Devastated, she threw herself into her studies, graduated from high school and at age seventeen entered Hunter College, despite her mother’s insistence that she go to work for the telephone company because they were now hiring colored. Marshall’s writing was rewarded with generous grants and fellowships, such as the Guggenheim Award and MacArthur grant, which allowed her to travel and write. She lived in Barbados for several months and Grenada for a year and traveled to Europe and Africa.

The most compelling part of this slim volume was of recalling her visitation to her maternal family in Barbados and her precious time there as a child and adult. I could see the green hills and feel the coolness of the sea baths; her details were so vivid. Marshall deftly articulated the significance of the triangular integration of Brooklyn, Barbados and the African continent into her life. Equally satisfying was her frankness about her writer’s block and her process for overcoming the obstacles that got in her way of her writing. Although I wanted more in-depth intimate details about her life such as the contentious relationship with her mother, I was still able to discern what made her such an indomitable force. I am as enthralled with Madame Marshall as I was when I was introduced to her in the 1970s and I bow down to a true artist and class act, phenomenal woman. How fitting to have read this book during Women’s History Month. I recommend to Paule Marshall fans and writers.

Dera R. Williams
APOOO BookClub

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