Born in Brooklyn, New York, Paule Marshall's identity as a Caribbean novelist and short-story writer arises from a historical as well as a social context. The daughter of Barbadian parents who migrated to the United States just after World War I as part of the first major wave of Caribbean migration, Marshall was nurtured in a Caribbean cultural community, spoke its language, and participated in its many rituals. If the designation Caribbean is understood to refer not simply to a geographical location but to culture, then Marshall must be considered not only a central Caribbean writer but as one of the many definers of its diasporic community. Writing in the December 1970 issue of the Journal of Black Studies, Barbadian writer Edward Brathwaite called Marshall's work "literature of reconnection," asserting that The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969) was "a significant contribution to the literature of the West Indies."

Marshall...