The first line of the short story "To Da-duh in Memoriam" by Paule Marshall says: "I did not see her at first I remember." We can understand by this line that the story is set in the past, because memories by definition are recollections of past events. However, this line does not tell us how far in the past the story is set. For this, we must read further. Later in the first paragraph, the author clarifies that she was only nine years old at the time the story takes place, and she is experiencing the island of Barbados for the first time. Obviously, she would not have written this account when she was only nine years old, which brings us to understand that she is looking back at this memory and writing about it from adulthood.
It turns out that the narrator, her mother, and her sister...
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have come to the island to visit the narrator's grandmother, who is over 80 years old. Her grandmother appears old but has a strong, youthful spirit. The narrator's mother refers to her as Da-duh, and has not seen her for 15 years, which means, of course, that the narrator has never met her grandmother. Da-duh immediately notices the narrator's strength and takes her in hand. Parts of the island frighten the narrator, and she compares it with New York, where she lives. Da-duh proudly shows the narrator her fruit trees and cane fields, and in response the narrator tells her what snow is like and how it would devastate the island's crops. Over the coming weeks, Da-duh and the narrator's conversations are almost like competitions, with Da-duh telling the narrator about the island and the narrator telling Da-duh about New York and modern innovations. Eventually, Da-duh becomes dispirited by the comparison between her small backward island and New York.
Soon after the narrator and her family leave, her grandmother dies. We don't get a specific indication of when the narrator is writing about until she describes Da-duh's death, which occurs on a day in 1937 when British planes fly low over the island. The last paragraph indicates that the narrator is writing the story long afterwards, in adulthood, because she talks about a period "after I was grown" when she would paint pictures from memory about the island her grandmother lived on.