Daughters (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Paule Marshall
- First Published: 1991
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The 1930’s-the 1980’s
- Setting: New York City and “Triunion” in the West Indies
- Principal Characters: Ursa Beatrice Mackenzie, Estelle Beatrice Harrison Mackenzie, Primus Mackenzie (The PM), Astral Delores Forde, Malvern, Ursa Louis Wilkerson Mackenzie (Mis- Mack), Celestine Marie-Claire Bellegarde, Vincereta “Viney” Daniels, Booker Harrison, Beatrice Harrison, Lowell Carruthers, Justin Beaufils, Sandy Lawson, Mae Ryland
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s
- Locales: New York, NY
Daughters is a rich and powerful novel, carefully conceived and craftily constructed around a set of tensions that connect the worlds of Triunion, a fictional Caribbean island- nation, and New York City in the person of Ursa Beatrice Mackenzie. In the opening pages, Ursa Mackenzie leaves a New York City clinic feeling guilty about having had an abortion. Her abortion becomes a metaphor for a host of failed dreams and ruined lives, a legacy of slavery, colonialism, and racism in the Americas. Daughters, Paule Marshall’s fourth novel, examines the role in the New World of...
[The entire page is 2394 words long]
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