Praisesong for the Widow

"The fight raged on. Brawling like fishwives! Like proverbial niggers on a Saturday night! With the fur stole like her hard-won life of the past thirty years being trampled into the dirt underfoot" (45). Avey Johnson, the main character in Paule Marshall's novel Praisesong for the Widow, is haunted by this dream of her Great Aunt Cuney. This nightmare awakens in her an emptiness and longing for something that she can not initially explain. Her life …

…any time you'd hear a lot of talk against them. That they're proud" (78). Marshall is trying to say that the pride that comes from their sense of belonging is what often eludes the black community in America. That in order to get ahead they need to mend the threads of their community identity and re-sew their ethnic tapestry by making a journey similar to Avey's journey; a journey into the revealing nature of their past.