To Da-Duh, In Memoriam

“Besides, being only nine years of age at the time and knowing nothing of islands I was busy attending to the alien sights and sounds of Barbados, the unfamiliar smells.”

The narrator is immediately fascinated by the “alien” environment of Barbados, which underlines how different the island is from her own urban environment in New York. The irony of her statement that she is unfamiliar with “islands,” when the borough of Manhattan is itself an island, underscores her unfamiliarity with natural settings. It is also significant that she is visiting the island for the first time at age nine, suggesting that her connections to her family’s immigrant background are tenuous due to the cost and difficulty of visiting.

“Moving swiftly toward us (so swiftly it seemed she did not intend stopping when she reached us but would sweep past us out the doorway which opened onto the sea and like Christ walk upon the water!), she was caught between the sunlight at her end of the building and the darkness inside—and for a moment she appeared to contain them both: the light in the long severe old-fashioned white dress she wore which brought the sense of a past that was still alive into our bustling present and in the snatch of white at her eye; the darkness in her black high-top shoes and in her face which was visible now that she was closer.”

This sentence sets up several symbolic elements of Da-duh. First, it emphasizes her mythical qualities with a simile comparing her to Christ walking on water. Next, it highlights Da-duh’s complexity through the imagery of the contrasting white dress and dark skin. Relatedly, it associates Da-duh firmly with the past without fully relegating her to it—she remains part of the “bustling present”—evoking the theme of Conflict and Cultural Connections Between Generations.