SOURCE: Waniek, Marilyn Nelson. “Paltry Things: Immigrants and Marginal Men in Paule Marshall's Short Fiction.” Callaloo 6, no. 2(18) (spring 1983): 46-56.

In the following essay, Waniek explores the themes of alienation and duality as reflected in Paule Marshall's short fiction.

As a first-generation West Indian-American and the author of three novels and a collection of short stories, Paule Marshall gives evidence in her work of a marginal duality similar to that felt by immigrants. While not herself an immigrant, Marshall grew up in an immigrant community whose legacy to her and her work is a share of its alienation. Marshall's first novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones,¹ may explain the source of that marginality. The basic conflict of this novel, between the protagonist's mother and her father, overshadows the protagonist's coming of age and her search for her identity. The mother has accepted the crass values of the upwardly-mobile Barbadian immigrant community...