Paule Marshall concludes her autobiographical essay Shaping World of my Art (1973) by reminding us, almost as a motto, that the offers much instruction for present struggle (112). Earlier in piece, Marshall had explicitly stated her belief that for black people to define ourselves on our own we must consciously engage our past (106). Indeed, each of her three novels published to date depicts a shattered Black protagonist who slowly regains wholeness through truly confronting past, both in historical and personal terms (110-11); it is surely no coincidence that each of these novels concludes with Black protagonist's return to an ancestral homeland and to fullness that is embodied in it. Because Marshall places such emphasis on importance of in defining one's present, also places a great deal of emphasis on fundamentally important role of memory. Marshall's explanation of vital role memory should play in one's life receives its most streamlined, almost paradigmatic, representation in her novel Praisesong for Widow (1983). This work focuses on character of Avey Johnson as comes to with herself by remembering and coming to with her past. As novel opens, Avey is portrayed as a typical widow of American Black bourgeoisie; her behavior is in many ways determined by Whites, as symbolized by her house in North White Plains. While on a cruise in Caribbean, Avey decides to return ahead of schedule, but is instead detained on island of Grenada. She discovers herself to have arrived on a holiday, furthermore, an annual excursion day all of Out-Islanders who work in Grenada return to Carriacou to celebrate their heritage and remember their ancestors. Watching crowd waiting to be transported, Avey herself begins to remember, and experiences a kind of deja vu; excursion calls to her mind times in her childhood had gone on the annual boat ride up Hudson River to Bear Mountain! (188), as well as feelings had when stood beside her great-aunt outside church in Tatem, watching elderly folk inside perform Ring Shout (190). Through remembering these communal rituals, Avey comes to feel threads that reach from Africa to Carriacouian Out-Islanders and to her great-aunt in South Carolina; also comes to realize that all of these threads travel through her as well. For those moments, Marshall writes in book's most epiphanic section, she became part of, indeed center of, a huge wide confraternity (191), all members of which exist within same circle of cultural memory. The excursion is itself in honor of that memory, for its central ritual is Beg Pardon, a prayer of atonement directed toward one's ancestors, but one that also serves to declare commonality of Black people from throughout time and space (Collier 313). The novel ends, as does ritual, with the Nation Dances, a dance of unity and strength (McCluskey 333), in which Avey is asked to dance for sake of her ancestors. In doing so, performing her version of Tatem Ring Shout, rediscovers her own heritage (as a member of Aradas) and begins to take her life back from false webs of American materialism that had threatened to devour her completely. By end of novel, then, Avey has cast aside her American identity because of her strong feelings of natural kinship to island people of Carriacou. Hers is story of the traveler who must first find answer to question of origins before can return home (Busia 205), for that answer entirely changes her definition of home. Lebert Joseph, archetypal crossroads figure in novel who guides Avey on her journey, warns her of power of ancestors. 'I tell you, you best remember them!' he says to Avey. 'If not they'll get vex and cause you nothing but trouble' (165). …