Reena and Other Stories: Including the Novella "Merle" - Softcover

Marshall, Paule

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0935312242 ISBN 13: 9780935312249

Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1993

Synopsis

This collection of short works illustrates the growth of a remarkable writer. Opening the volume is the much-acclaimed autobiographical essay, From the Poets in the Kitchen,” which pays homage to the hard-working, storytelling West Indian women who serve as her muses women who fought back against oppression and invisibility using the only weapon at their command: the spoken word. Such women appear in her luminous short stories, which travel from Brooklyn to Barbados and back again.

About this title

About the Author

Paule Marshall is the author of the novels Brown Girl; Brownstones; The Chosen Place; The Timeless People; Praisesong for the Widow; and Daughters. She has also written several collections of short stories, including Reena and Other Stories, and a memoir entitled Triangular Road.

Review

"Readers familiar with Marshall's novels, Brown Girl, Brownstones; The Chosen Place, The Timeless People; and Praisesong for the Widow, will welcome this collection of her early short fiction. Those who have yet to make Marshall's acquaintance have an enormous treat in store." Publishers Weekly

"The stories collected here are stories of transcendence and continuity. Paule Marshall's characters battle the twin oppressions of sexism and racism, and it is the self that emerges as the ultimate source of strength. Marshall attests to the maxim and the will to power over circumstance is, for the black woman, the will to write." Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of Colored People

"Black women are shown in Marshall's stories creating the power to define their lives. Reading these stories is both a political act and a great joy." Mary Helen Washington, editor of Black-Eyed Susans

"Readers familiar with Marshall's novels, Brown Girl, Brownstones; The Chosen Place, The Timeless People; and Praisesong for the Widow, will welcome this collection of her early short fiction. Those who have yet to make Marshall's acquaintance have an enormous treat in store." ―Publishers Weekly

"The stories collected here are stories of transcendence and continuity. Paule Marshall's characters battle the twin oppressions of sexism and racism, and it is the self that emerges as the ultimate source of strength. Marshall attests to the maxim and the will to power over circumstance is, for the black woman, the will to write." ―Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of Colored People

"Black women are shown in Marshall's stories creating the power to define their lives. Reading these stories is both a political act and a great joy." ―Mary Helen Washington, editor of Black-Eyed Susans

Edition details

• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0935312242
• ISBN 13: 9780935312249
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 224