Marshall's contemporary rendering of the divided self in "Daughters"

Paule Marshall has been writing since 1959, and is acknowledged as the fore-mother of contemporary Caribbean authors. Her West Indian roots and her experience in the U.S. enable Marshall to give readers a realistic depiction of Black people in the West. Her work is used to voice their concerns, as well as offer solutions for healing. In her most recent novel Daughters, Marshall employs literary devices which define the migration theme and evoke the cross-cultural experience. This paper will reveal the novel's structure to be a balanced matrix of comparisons between the Afro-American and West Indian cultures. It will show that this matrix is modeled on the main character's journey away from self-division toward re-connection and wholeness. In order to discover the divided self in Daughters, I will examine the techniques the author uses to draw the reader into her world. This method will prove that unlike her previous novels in which Marshall "leads" the reader by using conventional devices to reveal character and theme, Daughters is more experimental in technique and invites interpretation.