Praisesong For The Widow

Storytelling is a frequent motif employed to demonstrate and cultivate cultural legacies. Marshall portrays the motif as both an example of cultural inheritance and preservation; by telling and retelling individual and collective histories, the memories are honored and perpetuated. Therefore, the novel posits that Avey’s greatest duty to her ancestors is to share her story, as well as those she has been handed.

For example, Cuney’s story of the Ibos walking across the ocean back to Africa is Avey’s cultural inheritance. As a child, Avey recognizes that her great-aunt “had entrusted her with a mission she couldn’t even name yet had felt duty-bound to fulfill” (42). As she ages, Avey convinces herself to ignore this duty as the distance between her and her cultural sense of self widens. As Cuney haunts Avey’s dreams, she points to the duty Avey once felt, revealing that Cuney did in fact intend for Avey to retell it. Therefore, Avey’s cultural regeneration can only be complete once she recognizes the cultural inheritance of the tale of Ibo Landing. In finally sharing it, Avey preserves her great-grandmother’s and great-aunt’s legacy while asserting her own legacy in relation to her shared heritage.

Storytelling is represented regularly through the conversations Avey has with others—the taxi driver’s tale of the Carriacou Excursion and Lebert Joseph’s explanation of the Big Drum and the meaning behind their songs and dances. These, then, are another example of storytelling being essential in relating and maintaining traditions. Furthermore, the novel positions song and dance as their own forms of storytelling. Each song/dance conveys a tale directly related to cultural identity, thus forming lasting cultural meaning. Avey perceives the significance of these methods of storytelling at the Big Drum when she hears a “single, dark plangent note [that] […] sounded like the distillation of a thousand sorrow songs” (244). Within this note, the song conveys the intergenerational trauma felt by legacy of the African diaspora and ultimately works to “remind them of the true and solemn business of the fete” (245). Storytelling—in all its forms—serves a profound purpose by communicating experiences and feelings that contribute to a collective cultural identity.  

Dance is used as both a symbol and motif within the text; it serves to symbolize spiritual and cultural expression, as well as a motif to relate the thematic importance of renewing one’s cultural sense of self. The thematic and narrative significance of dance is introduced through the tale of Avey’s great-aunt’s self-imposed exile from the church in Tatem. Cuney “had been caught ‘crossing her feet’ in a Ring Shout” (33) and temporarily kicked out. She denied that she was dancing, “claiming that it had been the Spirit moving powerfully in her which had caused her to forget and cross her feet” (33). Here, the importance of keeping one’s feet on the ground represents maintaining a grounded disposition: grounded in the church, grounded in the earth, grounded in one’s sense of self. By crossing her feet, Cuney represents temporarily losing sight of this.

As a child, Avey longed to join the Ring Shout because it represented a community to which she always wanted to belong. She finally accomplishes this dream as an adult during the Big Drum. Surrounded by dancing and moved by the Beg Pardon, Avey’s body moves before her mind can catch up. Soon, “[h]er feet of their own accord began to glide forwards, but in such a way they scarcely left the ground” (248). Avey recovers a bit of herself here; her body remembers the movements she had conditioned her mind to forget. Years ago, when they still lived on Halsey Street, Avey and Jerome’s dancing nurtured their spiritual connection to their culture and to one another. This ritual eventually fell away as they chased material success. Avey, though, reclaims her sense of self through dancing at the Big Drum: “for all the sudden unleashing of her body she was being careful to observe one rule: Not once did the soles of her feet leave the ground” (250). She frees herself through physical expression, and, in joining in the ritual, honors her heritage. Most significantly, though, Avey is careful to keep her feet on the ground, representing her decision to remain grounded in sense of self.

Moreover, dance as ritualistic practice emphasizes the importance of tending to one’s ancestral roots. Avey’s decision to dance at the Big Drum marks both her cultural regeneration and her acknowledgment of the cultural legacy she is duty-bound to uphold. This legacy involves both her cultural inheritance and nurturing her own spiritual sense of self—the woman she was on Halsey Street and still is today. Through the cleansing and enlightening process of her cultural regeneration, Avey realizes that part of her cultural legacy is to tell others of her life on Halsey Street; she’d tell everyone “how when she would put on records after coming home from work, the hardwood floor, reverberating with the music, used to feel like rich and solid ground under her. She had felt centered and sustained then” (254). Therefore, it is right that dancing is what returns Avey to herself, for it has always been the ritual she found most sacred.