Praisesong For The Widow

“Her mind in a way wasn’t even in her body, or for that matter, in the room. From the moment she had awakened in a panic less than an hour ago and come to the reckless decision, her mind has left to go and stand down at the embarkation door near the waterline five deck below.”

Avey’s sudden change in character here represents how altered she is by the feelings that have taken hold of her. The mind’s separation from the body is an introduction to the novel’s emphasis on the body’s ability to sense and remember what the mind has forgotten. Avey’s mind has left because her body has taken over, moving her to where she needs to be. The passage also foreshadows the similar phenomenon experienced by Avey’s great-grandmother who feels her mind leave her body as she watched the Ibos walk back into the ocean. This positions Avey’s narrative as one working toward the same fate as her namesake, which Avey long ago felt honor-bound to achieve. 

“[T]o Avey Johnson’s disgust, [Thomasina] had abandoned them to dance in a carnival parade they were watching with other passengers from the Bianca Pride. Had gone off amide a throng of strangers swishing her bony hips to the drums. With the slight hump like an organ grinder’s monkey begging pennies from her shoulders. And with their fellow passengers watching. White face laughing! White hands applauding! Avey Johnson had never been so mortified.” 

The increasingly present motif of dance is introduced here through Avey’s shame in seeing Thomasina move freely in front of the other passengers. This quote is significant because it reveals Avey’s long-conditioned anxiety about her black identity—and that of her peers. She associates Thomasina’s free movement with the blackness she has tried to stamp out from her public image. It is a blackness rooted in cultural expression as well as one she feels subscribes to white prejudice.