Read Nella Larsen's novels for her take on women's sexuality, race, and the African-American middle class.
Nella Larsen was the author of short stories and two novels-Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929)-that were published during the Harlem Renaissance.
After attending Fisk University, the University of Copenhagen and Lincoln Hospital (nursing school in New York City), Larsen became a nurse. However, her own illness caused her to leave this first profession to become a librarian and a writer.
She was born in 1891 as the daughter of a white Danish mother and black father from St. Croix. This heritage gave Larsen a unique vision for her writing. Her novels won her praise and awards as a highly accomplished author. She was the first African-American woman to receive a Guggenheim fellowship.
After her second novel was published, she left behind her writing career and interest in her work reached a low point. However, in the past decades, Larsen's work has resurfaced. The study of the Harlem Renaissance and women's writing are two reasons for this. But, perhaps, most compelling is Larsen's material itself.
Black women's sexuality, perceptions of race, and the black middle class are her main themes. In Quicksand, Helga Crane, an educated character with a heritage similar to Larsen's, is caught between the image in the 1920s of black women as being overly sexual, African-American middle class repression of sex, and Helga's own sensual feelings. She also deals with what she sees as hypocrisy in the black middle class and, when she moves to Denmark, her feeling that she is seen as the black primitive. She finally gives up, moves to the South, marries an African-American preacher, and has several children.. This result, which provides her a certain respectability, also mires her in "quicksand" because she is not living true to her urban, relatively sophisticated self.
Passing appears to follow the usual pattern of other passing novels. These are the stories of light-skinned blacks who for whatever economic, social, cultural, or other reasons decide to live as whites. However, if you look just below the surface of Larsen's novel, you will see a parody of this type of novel. Her characters Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry are both light-skinned friends. Clare passes, Irene does not. Amid suggestions that Irene might be romantically attracted to Clare, Clare eventually falls to her death from a window. The question is did Irene push her. This is clearly an interesting twist to the passing novel.
Unfortunately, in 1930, controversy about the possibility that she plagiarized material for one of her published short stories ("Sanctuary")-even though the charge was proven untrue-caused Nella Larsen to end her writing career. She returned to nursing and died in 1964.
