They Cried I AM

The Center for Black Literature https://centerforblackliterature.com/ is honoring the late Paule Marshall. In the month acknowledging women's accomplishments, I wanted to introduce one of the many black women writers who made a difference. If you want to know more about Paule Marshall or the Center for Black Literature visit the link above.

They Cried I AM: The Life and Work of Paule Marshall and John A. Williams.

Paule Marshall (1929–2019), played an indispensable role in the shaping of twentieth- and twenty-first-century African American and African diaspora literary canons and in making Black women central to those traditions. Writer Alice Walker described Marshall as a writer “unequaled in intelligence, vision, craft, by anyone of her generation.” Marshall’s 1959 novel Brown Girl, Brownstones is hailed in the Norton Anthology of African American Literature as “the novel that most Black feminist critics consider to be the beginning of contemporary African American women’s writings.” In all of her fiction, Marshall produced Black women figures that are creative, daring, and intelligent, traveling the world in search of an expansive sense of Black identity and community. Marshall’s published work spans five decades: Brown Girl, Brownstones, 1959; Soul Clap Hands and Sing, 1961, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People, 1969; Reena and Other Stories, 1983; Praisesong for the Widow, 1983; Daughters, 1991; The Fisher King, 2000; and she published a memoir, Triangular Road, in 2009.