Nella Larsen
1) Passing
Author
Language
English
Description
"The beautiful, elegant, and ambitious Clare Kendry leads a dangerous life. A light-skinned African American married to a white man unaware of her racial heritage, Clare has severed all ties to her past to become part of white, middle-class society. Clare's childhood friend, Irene Redfield, as light-skinned as Clare, has chosen to remain within the African American community. Married to a successful doctor and the mother of two boys, Irene refuses...
2) Quicksand
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Born to an indifferent white mother and an absent black father, and scorned 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...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Nella Larsen was an important writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance. While she was not prolific, her work was powerful and critically acclaimed. Collected here are both of her novels, "Passing" and "Quicksand", as well as all three of her published short stories; "Freedom," "The Wrong Man", and "Sanctuary". "Quicksand" was autobiographical in nature and examined a woman's need for sexual fulfilment balanced against respectability and acceptance...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Library of America presents one of the masterworks of the Harlem Renaissance, the tragic story of a young woman caught between worlds.
Quicksand (1928) turns the techniques of literary naturalism on questions of race, gender, and class, with unforgettable results. Nella Larsen’s immensely stylish debut novel tells the story of sensitive, proud, and beautiful Helga Crane, the daughter (like Larsen herself)...
Quicksand (1928) turns the techniques of literary naturalism on questions of race, gender, and class, with unforgettable results. Nella Larsen’s immensely stylish debut novel tells the story of sensitive, proud, and beautiful Helga Crane, the daughter (like Larsen herself)...
Author
Language
English
Description
Nella Larsen's 1929 novel Passing is hailed today as a significant literary work of Harlem Renaissance, though for several decades it, like all of her works, was out of print. As history rights a wrong and recommits Larsen's name to memory, it is beneficial to look at the other writings she published over her short career, collected here in Beyond Passing: The Further Writings of Nella Larsen. Contained within are her autobiographical novel Quicksand,...
Author
Language
English
Description
"A light-skinned beauty who spends years passing for white finds herself dangerously drawn to an old friend's Harlem neighborhood. A restless young mulatto tries desperately to find a comfortable place in a world in which she sees herself as a perpetual outsider. A mother's confrontation with tragedy tests her loyalty to her race. The gifted Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen wrote compelling dramas about the black middle class that featured sensitive,...
Language
English
Description
In little more than a decade during the 1920s and 30s, a new generation of African American writers, artists, musicians, and intellectuals based mostly in upper Manhattan burst through aesthetic conventions with unprecedented openness and daring. Perhaps no one was more central to the creative upheaval that became known as the Harlem Renaissance than a group of novelists who were determined to describe their own lives and their own world frankly and...