I loved reading Remembering Paule: A Photo Memoir of Her Richmond Years, by Daryl Cumber Dance. This moving memoir with photos is about the enduring friendship between African American novelist Paule Marshall and African American Folklorist and literary critic Daryl Cumber Dance. The narrative moves mostly in chronicle sequence. The book is written in eight chapters, starting when Dance met Marshall in 1981 at a College Language Association in New Orleans. Marshall was the feature speaker at the CLA Banquet. Dance recalls, “As the crowd disbursed, I cautiously approached her, probably babbling about my enthusiasm for her work, probably congratulating her a hundredth time for her presentation.”
What Dance mostly remembered was chatting with Marshall until the room had cleared, and neither had noticed. They exchanged contact information to stay in touch. And they did for 38 years.
Dance began a campaign to invite Marshall to come to Virginia Commonwealth University. Fortunately, for all of us, the University had a Visiting Scholars Program to attract major Black scholars. Dance wasted no time with her new campaign to move Marshall into a permanent position at VCU. Their offices were next door and they often attended University events together. That long friendship is the subject matter of Remembering Paule.
Combining the photos with the prose offer a deeper understanding of their relationship. Marshall often sent Dance postcards when she was traveling without her. The handwritten notes are exquisite. Even though they were deeply committed and determined in their work , these friends had fun! Dance and Marshall became a traveling duo to the world, reading and talking about their work and the work of other noted Black Americans writers and artists. It was a special time in history—much of it captured in Dance’s photos.
Reading Remembering Paule, I heard their laughter, saw them trying out a cozy restaurant or watched them experience a new play at the theater. I wanted to be there with them. Dance’s fine writing and images allowed me to share many of those marvelous moments.
Only a writer as talented as Dance could chronicle with such a delicate balance the nature of their friendship. Dance was always in awe of her talented friend, noting that she regarded Marshall as Marshall regarded Langston Hughes–as “a lionized, bigger than life-celebrity writer whose friendship delighted and awed her,” but, she explains, “Despite my almost worshipping of Paule, she was never one to lord it over anyone.” She early on reminds us, “Paule was very private and reserved, and I was always careful not in any way to take advantage of our friendship. I never asked her to autograph her books for me.”
Dance comments often about the unique quality of their friendship: “We were friends, close friends, congenial friends, but we were not chums, not soul sisters, not confidants, not intimates.” Basically, they were friends who respected and supported each other.
Their friendship reminded me of other women writers’ relationships, especially Valerie Boyd’s claiming Zora Neale Hurston as her literary grandmother and Alice Walker as her literary mother. Boyd spent her life reading and writing about them.
Remembering Paule, is moving emotionally, but the work is fluid of movements from place to place. These globe trotters were taking on the world. Washington, DC, Paris, France, Kobe College, Japan, Barbados, Jamaica, Africa, Durham, North Carolina, Lawrence , Kansas, Baltimore, Maryland and so many other places.
Daryl Cumber Dance
The last chapter, “The Waning Years,” is the heartbreaker. As much as you know what is going to happen, our own hearts are broken too. Dance’s husband passed. Then Marshall, too, after a few years of declining health, joined the ancestors on August 12, 2019. Dance turned to the preparation of this book to process her grief. The result, Remembering Paule: A Photo Memoir of Her Richmond Years, is a true testament of a deep and enduring friendship, along with respect and pure joy!
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