Daughters | Daughters

At a glance:

Author: Paule Marshall
First Published: 1991
Type of Work: Novel
Type of Plot: Social realism
Time of Work: The 1930’s to the 1980’s
Setting: New York City and Triunion, a fictional island in the West Indies
Principal Characters: Ursa Beatrice Mackenzie, Estelle Beatrice Harrison Mackenzie, Primus Mackenzie, Astral Delores Forde, Vincereta Daniels (Viney), Lowell Carruthers, Ursa Louise Wilkerson Mackenzie (Mis-Mack), Celestine Marie-Claire Bellegarde
Genres: Long fiction
Subjects: 1950’s
Locales: New York, NY

Daughters is the story of a woman’s search for her identity. As her two given names suggest, Ursa Beatrice Mackenzie is the product of two very different cultures. She is named Ursa for her paternal grandmother, Ursa Louise, a Triunion shopkeeper, and Beatrice for her mother, Estelle Beatrice Harrison Mackenzie, a sorority girl from a Hartford, Connecticut, family of schoolteachers and social workers. At the beginning of the novel, despite her father’s pleas and her mother’s letters, Ursa has remained away from Triunion for four years. Yet neither...

Daughters | Daughters

At a glance:

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