Throughout the novel, there are many flashbacks to Avey's earlier life experiences with her late husband, Jerome Johnson, as well as childhood events that reconnect her with her lost cultural roots.

The opening begins with Avey "Avatara" Johnson packing her bags aboard her 17-day cruise on the Bianca Pride, during the late 1970s.

The reason for her sudden departure began three nights before, when she had a dream about her great-aunt Cuney and a disturbing encounter in the Versailles dining-room with a peach parfait.

She raised three girls in both Brooklyn and North White Plains, moving from the apartment when she and her late husband, Jerome "Jay" Johnson, changed economic status twenty years previously.

Seemingly more aware of her cultural roots, Marion teaches in a small community school and helps volunteer at a church in Harlem.

During their married life, Jerome worked as a stock boy in a department store, in addition to later getting jobs as a vacuum cleaner salesman, and a certified accountant, through going back to school.

The cab driver asserts that those venturing to Carriacou only talk in the Creole dialect one weekend a year and the rest of the time speak in the “King’s English” (76).

Dance clearly plays an important part in her life even before her journey to Carriacou as Avey uses it to temporarily forget her daily troubles and place things into perspective.

In the midst of the 120.........-year struggle to escape from the poverty on Halsey Street, his and Avey's romantic relationship dissolves and their emotional detachment increases.

Ultimately, Jay's work and determination to leave their Brooklyn neighborhood consumes his person, allowing him and Avey little time to rekindle their lost love.

The dream Avey has at the beginning of the book that compels her to cut her cruise short further captures the perils of living a shallow, object-oriented life.

Through the remembrance of the past hardships of the slaves, Avey is able to alleviate her own, more temporary suffering aboard the ship: "Their suffering- the depth of it, the weight if it in the cramped space- made hers of no consequence."

Runagate refers to Avey Johnson's breaking away from the other members of her cruise ship party and heading to the island of Grenada.

Lave Tete makes reference to the actual washing and cleansing of Avey Johnson in the text, as well as a sort of spiritual renewal which accompanies it.

"The praisong is performed by a group of dancing natives on the tiny island of Carriacou, and how Avey Johnson comes to be there...is a story both convincing and eerily dreamlike."

- Anne Tyler, The New York Herald "Praisesong is not only about alienation and reaffirmation, but also about the role and the importance of Black women as transmitters and preservers of culture, identity, and heritage."

- Thelma Ravell-Pinto, Journal of Black Studies, 1987 "It doesn't take a reader long to figure out where Paule Marshall is headed in her ultimately successful new novel, Praisesong for the Widow."

[2] The author makes use of many quotations throughout the text in order to bring to the attention of the reader the way in which Avey Johnson was under the influence of many generations of material.

When referring to her married life, Avey is living in Harlem, New York, in a poor, mostly African American neighborhood, and more specifically on Hasley Street in a small apartment.

Reissued 2021, United States, San Francisco: McSweeney's; hardcover ISBN 978-1-952-11904-0), with an introduction by Opal Palmer Adisa.