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Paule Marshall (April 9, 1929 – August 12, 2019) was an American writer, best known for her 1959 debut novel Brown Girl, Brownstones. In 1992, at the age of 63, Marshall was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship grant.
She attended Bushwick High School and subsequently enrolled in Hunter College, City University of New York, with plans of becoming a social worker. She took ill during college and took a year off, during which time she decided to major in English Literature, eventually earning her Bachelor of Arts degree at Brooklyn College in 1953 and her master's degree at Hunter College in 1955.Cardwel, Candace, "Marshall, Paule", in Paul Finkelman, Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present, Oxford University Press, USA, 2009, p. 263. After graduating from college, Marshall wrote for Our World, the acclaimed nationally distributed magazine edited for African-American readers, which she credited with teaching her discipline in writing and eventually aiding her in writing her first novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones. In 1950, she married psychologist Kenneth Marshall; they divorced in 1963. In the 1970s, she married Nourry Menard, a businessman. "Paule Marshall", Voices from the Gaps – University of Minnesota.
Early in her career, she wrote poetry, but later returned to prose, her debut novel being published in 1959. Brown Girl, Brownstones tells the story of Selina Boyce, a girl growing up in a small black immigrant community. Selina is caught between her mother, who wants to conform to the ideals of her new home and make the American dream come true, and her father, who longs to go back to Barbados. The dominant themes in the novel – travel, migration, psychic fracture and striving for wholeness – are important structuring elements in her later works as well.
Marshall received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1961 and in the same year published Soul Clap Hands and Sing, a collection of four novellas that won her the National Institute of Arts Award. In 1965, she was chosen by Langston Hughes to accompany him on a State Department-sponsored world tour, on which they both read their work, which was a boon to her career.Yardley, Jonathan, "A memoir from Paule Marshall, author of "Brown Girl, Brownstones". The Washington Post, March 1, 2009. She subsequently published the novels The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (1969), which the New York Times Book Review called "one of the four or five most impressive novels ever written by a black American", The New York Times Book Review, November 30, 1969, p. 24. and Praisesong for the Widow (1983), the latter winning the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award in 1984.Wainwright, Mary Katherine (May 29, 2018), "Marshall, Paule 1929–", Encyclopedia.com. In 2021, the book was reissued by McSweeney's, as part of their "Of the Diaspora" series highlighting important works in Black literature, with an introduction by Opal Palmer Adisa.
Marshall taught at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of California, Berkeley, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Yale University, before holding the Helen Gould Sheppard Chair of Literature and Culture at New York University. Creative Writing Program, New York University. In 1993 she received an Honorary degree from Bates College. She lived in Richmond, Virginia.
She was a 1992 MacArthur Fellow and a winner of the Dos Passos Prize for Literature. She was designated as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library in 1994.
Marshall was inducted into the Celebrity Path at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in 2001.
Her memoir, Triangular Road, was published in 2009. Triangular Road: A Memoir by Paule Marshall, Basic Civitas Books. .
In 2010, Paule Marshall won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. "Paule Marshall 2009 lifetime Achievement", Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. She died in Richmond, Virginia on August 12, 2019, having had dementia in her later years.Italie, Hillel (August 16, 2019), "Paule Marshall, novelist of diverse influences, dead at 90", AP. A biography by Mary Helen Washington, to be published by Yale University Press, is in preparation.
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