Cultural suicides, island retreats, and diasporic revelations: A socio-historical approach to Paule Marshall's "Praisesong for the Widow" and Toni Morrison's "Tar Baby"

As reflected in Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow and Toni Morrison's Tar Baby, many black characters in literature with a Caribbean setting inhabit a realm of stasis. They negotiate two worlds---a white world with hierarchies of power and success and selective acceptance, and a black world, usually with restricted power. Caught between these two worlds, the exiled slowly begin to lose their sense of roots and to embrace cultural suicide. Some flee to the Caribbean, where they may regain what is lost. This paradise, with all its historical markers of the African diaspora, ultimately forces these characters either to confront their rootlessness and to reconnect with the community or to destroy any connections they once had. In dramatizing the journeys and choices of their protagonists, Marshall and Morrison reinvent the Caribbean not just as a retreat, but as a site for reclamation of black identity.