Paule Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones
Article:
Paule Marshall 's 'Brown Girl,
Brownstones ': reconciling ethnicity and individualism. (African
American woman author 's semiautobiographical novel)
Article from:African American Review | Article date:June 22, 1998
Edward Said claims that "students of post-colonial politics have not . . . looked enough at the ideas that minimize orthodoxy and authoritarian or patriarchal thought, that take a severe view of the coercive nature of identity politics" (219). Paule Marshall 's Brown Girl, Brownstones does exactly that: It explores the potential of coercion behind the notion of ethnic solidarity. What
Carole Boyce Davis has said about autobiographical writings by black women holds true for the semi-autobiographical Brown Girl, Brownstones …show more content…
Selina shows strength of character early on and appears old beyond her years, while also harboring a wish to escape from her environment. These traits are made explicit when she first appears in the novel as a ten-year-old girl with scuffed legs and a body as straggly as the clothes she wore. A haze of sunlight seeping down from the skylight through the dust and dimness of the hall caught her wide full mouth, the small but strong nose, the eyes deep set in the darkness of her face. They were not the eyes of a child.
Something too old lurked in their centers. . . . She seemed to know the world down there in the dark hall and beyond for what it was. Yet knowing, she still longed to leave this safe, sunlit place at the top of the house for the challenge there. (4)
Selina 's thinness suggests an ascetic side of her character and foreshadows her anti-materialistic outlook on life, which fully emerges later in the novel. Her scuffed legs and strong nose reveal "toughness," an orientation toward action also emphasized by the last sentence of the quotation, which alludes to
Paule Marshall 's 'Brown Girl,
Brownstones ': reconciling ethnicity and individualism. (African
American woman author 's semiautobiographical novel)
Article from:African American Review | Article date:June 22, 1998
Edward Said claims that "students of post-colonial politics have not . . . looked enough at the ideas that minimize orthodoxy and authoritarian or patriarchal thought, that take a severe view of the coercive nature of identity politics" (219). Paule Marshall 's Brown Girl, Brownstones does exactly that: It explores the potential of coercion behind the notion of ethnic solidarity. What
Carole Boyce Davis has said about autobiographical writings by black women holds true for the semi-autobiographical Brown Girl, Brownstones …show more content…
Selina shows strength of character early on and appears old beyond her years, while also harboring a wish to escape from her environment. These traits are made explicit when she first appears in the novel as a ten-year-old girl with scuffed legs and a body as straggly as the clothes she wore. A haze of sunlight seeping down from the skylight through the dust and dimness of the hall caught her wide full mouth, the small but strong nose, the eyes deep set in the darkness of her face. They were not the eyes of a child.
Something too old lurked in their centers. . . . She seemed to know the world down there in the dark hall and beyond for what it was. Yet knowing, she still longed to leave this safe, sunlit place at the top of the house for the challenge there. (4)
Selina 's thinness suggests an ascetic side of her character and foreshadows her anti-materialistic outlook on life, which fully emerges later in the novel. Her scuffed legs and strong nose reveal "toughness," an orientation toward action also emphasized by the last sentence of the quotation, which alludes to