[2] Marshall's father had migrated from the Caribbean island of Barbados to New York in 1919 and, during her childhood, deserted the family to join a quasi-religious cult, leaving his wife to raise their children by herself.

[5] She attended Bushwick High School and subsequently enrolled in Hunter College, City University of New York, with plans of becoming a social worker.

[7] Selina is caught between her mother, who wants to conform to the ideals of her new home and make the American dream come true, and her father, who longs to go back to Barbados.

[7] The dominant themes in the novel – travel, migration, psychic fracture and striving for wholeness – are important structuring elements in her later works as well.

[7] Marshall received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1961 and in the same year published Soul Clap Hands and Sing, a collection of four novellas that won her the National Institute of Arts Award.

[10] In 1965, she was chosen by Langston Hughes to accompany him on a State Department-sponsored world tour, on which they both read their work, which was a boon to her career.

[13] In 2021, the book was reissued by McSweeney's, as part of their "Of the Diaspora" series highlighting important works in Black literature, with an introduction by Opal Palmer Adisa.