Who Is To Da-Duh In Memoriam

To Da-Duh in Memoriam is about an adult’s life story (the narrator) as she looks back on a childhood memory from the year 1937. The recollection of this memory focuses on the trip she took as a nine year old girl to meet her grandmother, named Da-Duh, for the first time. She travels from New York to a Barbados and is accompanied by her mother and her sister. The visit makes a great impact on Dah-Duh and the girl (the narrator) as they develop a loving, yet competitive, relationship. There is a competitive edge to their conversations because they each try to outdo each other on the virtues of where they each call home. Every time Da-Duh shows her granddaughter something, she would ask if they had anything similar in New York that would even come close to whatever she showed her. When she was told that New York didn’t have anything that could top that comparison, it would make Da-Duh feel like her home and her way of living was the best way to live.

Dah-Duh takes the narrator to see the natural resources that Barbados has to offer such as the fruit orchards and sugar canes (nature), while the narrator describes the modern world of New York, with its machines and buildings (industrialism) to her grandmother. The narrator can sense Da-Duh fears the signs of the city

She seems to have lost a part of herself that day. For the remainder of the trip, her walks with the narrator are shorter and less spirited. She spends most of her time napping until the family’s departure back to New York. On the day of their departure, Da-duh reminds her granddaughter to send the post card. The narrator sends the postcard as promised, but it arrives right after Da-duh has died. Shortly after the family departs, riots in Bridgetown, where Da-Duh lives, break out. The British had sent planes to fly over the island in an effort to end the riots. Everyone in the village fled, except Da-duh. She was later found dead, on a chair, by her