Silent Sites of Memory in Paule Marshall’s "The Chosen Place, The Timeless People"

Abstract

As the title of the book suggests, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969) is place-focused; it is indeed a narrative of place and its people. The main fictional setting is a fictive Caribbean island, which acts as an essential locale in the protagonists’ act of (re)memory and (com)memoration. An emotionally charged place, this apparently insignificant island acquires a majestic stature in the book; it is space and place, home and exile, paradise and purgatory, past and present, remembrance and forgetfulness. This paper focuses on specific sites which are emblematic of the island community, given the complex role they play in the restoration of memory and identity. Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire will be used here with an understanding that, in a Caribbean setting, places record the monumentality of loss caused by colonialism and its aftermath. The cane field and Sugar’s bar are places where the past lives, bearing constant proof of terrifying colonial abuse. Other locales, however, mainly dwellings and gardens, will be identified and examined as a solution to the protagonists’ exile. The paper aims to demonstrate that all these locales are the essence of the island or, to paraphrase Derek Walcott, they are the genuine fresco, map-less, history-less yet quintessential for the ‘persistence of memory.’