Triangular Road: A Memoir (13 page)

Dare I hope?

I raised my glass of palm wine to Lady Luck. Happily, she didn’t disappoint me. Her help wasn’t in the form of a heavyweight grant. (That would come a decade later with the MacArthur Fellowship.) Instead, three years after FESTAC the Kenyan government invited a group of black American artists and writers, including yours truly, to visit the country, all expenses paid. On my own, I included a side trip to Uganda, which, unfortunately, proved to be an unwise choice at the
time. I also tried but failed to enter Tanzania as well as Zambia, home of my Bemba twin.

At present, I’m in the throes of writing about that limited and frustrating East African experience. Then it’ll be back to my primary love: the novel, the short story.

Copyright © 2009 by Paule Marshall

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Marshall, Paule, 1929-
Triangular road : a memoir / Paule Marshall.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-0-786-74421-3

1. Marshall, Paule, 1929- 2. African American authors—
Biography. 3. Women and literature—United States—History—
20th century. 4. Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967. 5. African
Americans—Intellectual life—20th century. I. Title.
PS3563.A7223Z46 2008
813’.54—dc22
2008036671