Nella Larsen

Nella Larsen

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Photo: Carl Van Vecten
Nella Larsen (1893-1963)

Nella Larsen was the first AA woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing (1930). Larsen authored two novels. Her first, Quicksand was published in 1928 and her second Passing was published in 1929. For the last thirty years of her life Larsen worked as a nurse in Brooklyn's Bethel Hospital.

Born April 13, 1891, in Chicago, Illinois, United States; died March 30, 1964, in New York, New York, United States; daughter of a Danish mother and a West Indian father; married Elmer S. Imes (a physicist), May 3, 1919 (divorced, 1933). Larsen attended Fisk University, Nashville, TN, 1909-10, and University of Copenhagen, 1910-12; studied nursing at Lincoln Hospital, New York, NY, 1912-15.

In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line
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Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9780674021808
ISBN: 0674021800
Number Of Pages: 624
Publication Date: May 30, 2006
Publisher: Belknap Press

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Born to a Danish seamstress and a black West Indian cook in one of the Western Hemisphere's most infamous vice districts, Nella Larsen (1891-1964) lived her life in the shadows of America's racial divide. She wrote about that life, was briefly celebrated in her time, then was lost to later generations--only to be rediscovered and hailed by many as the best black novelist of her generation. In his search for Nella Larsen, the "mystery woman of the Harlem Renaissance," George Hutchinson exposes the truths and half-truths surrounding this central figure of modern literary studies, as well as the complex reality they mask and mirror. His book is a cultural biography of the color line as it was lived by one person who truly embodied all of its ambiguities and complexities.

Author of a landmark study of the Harlem Renaissance, Hutchinson here produces the definitive account of a life long obscured by misinterpretations, fabrications, and omissions. He brings Larsen to life as an often tormented modernist, from the trauma of her childhood to her emergence as a star of the Harlem Renaissance. Showing the links between her experiences and her writings, Hutchinson illuminates the singularity of her achievement and shatters previous notions of her position in the modernist landscape. Revealing the suppressions and misunderstandings that accompany the effort to separate black from white, his book addresses the vast consequences for all Americans of color-line culture's fundamental rule: race trumps family.

Passing (Norton Critical Editions)
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By Nella Larsen

Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 0393979164
Number Of Pages: 546
Publication Date: September 19, 2007
Publisher: W. W. Norton

Nella Larsen is a central figure in African American, Modernist, and women's literature. Her status as a Harlem Renaissance woman writer was rivaled by only Zora Neale Hurston's. This Norton Critical Edition of Larsen's electrifying 1929 novel includes Carla Kaplan's detailed and thought-provoking introduction, thorough explanatory annotations, and a Note on the Text.

An unusually rich "Background and Contexts" section connects the novel to the historical events of the day, most notably the sensational Rhinelander/Jones case of 1925. Fourteen contemporary reviews are reprinted, including those by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Mary Griffin, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Published accounts from 1911 to 1935—by Langston Hughes, Juanita Ellsworth, and Caleb Johnson, among others—provide a nuanced view of the contemporary cultural dimensions of race and passing, both in America and abroad. Also included are Larsen's statements on the novel and on passing, as well as a generous selection of her letters and her central writings on "The Tragic Mulatto(a)" in American literature. Additional perspective is provided by related Harlem Renaissance works.

"Criticism" provides fifteen diverse critical interpretations, including those by Mary Helen Washington, Cheryl A. Wall, Deborah E. McDowell, David L. Blackmore, Kate Baldwin, and Catherine Rottenberg.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

Quicksand (Dover Books on Literature & Drama)
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By Nella Larsen

Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 0486451402
Number Of Pages: 144
Publication Date: September 15, 2006
Publisher: Dover Publications

Born to a white mother and an absent black father, and despised for her dark skin, Helga Crane has long had to fend for herself. As a young woman, Helga teaches at an all-black school in the South, but even here she feels different. Moving to Harlem and eventually to Denmark, she attempts to carve out a comfortable life and place for herself, but ends up back where she started, choosing emotional freedom that quickly translates into a narrow existence.

Quicksand, Nella Larsen's powerful first novel, has intriguing autobiographical parallels and at the same time invokes the international dimension of African American culture of the 1920s. It also evocatively portrays the racial and gender restrictions that can mark a life.

"Fine, thoughtful and courageous. It is, on the whole, the best piece of fiction that Negro America has produced since the heyday of [Charles] Chesnutt." (W. E. B. Du Bois)