Nella Larsen (1891-1964) was an American writer of the Harlem Renaissance. She is best known for two books, “Quicksand” (1928 ) and “Passing” (1929). Her characters are women like herself who are part white, part black and not quite sure who they are.
For years she was out of print. In the 1970s she started to be read again. Those who teach courses in black and women studies at American universities like her books because her characters question who they are as women and as blacks.
In America there is the One Drop Rule: if you look part African, then you are considered to be black. If you look pure European, then you are seen as white. Most people fall squarely on one side or the other. But some, like Nella Larsen herself, lie on the colour line. Some pass for white.
“Passing” is about two friends who are on that line. One marries a black man and lives as a black woman in Harlem. The other passes for white: she marries a white man, who has no idea she is part black, and lives as a white woman. She thinks it is the answer to all her troubles, but in the end she finds she would rather be poor and black than rich and white!
Helga Crane, the hero in “Quicksand”, is also on the colour line. Much of the book is based on Larsen’s own life. Crane goes from place to place, but she does not feel like she belongs anywhere. Not with whites, not with blacks. She goes from man to man but never finds love.
Larsen’s books were so good that in 1930 she got a Guggenheim Fellowship, the first black woman ever to get one. But soon after her life started to fall apart. First people said her short story “Sanctuary” was copied from someone else’s story. Not true. Then in 1933 she went through a very public divorce.
She left Harlem. She said she was going to South America. Some thought she never left the country but changed her name and passed for white. No one knew what became of her till 1964 when she turned up dead in the Lower East Side, a poor part of New York. She had been working as a nurse in Brooklyn all those years.
Her father was a black man from St Croix in the West Indies, her mother a white woman from Denmark. Her father left and her mother married a white man (some say it was her own father passing as white). Larsen grew up in a white part of Chicago, the only black person in a white family. It was not till she got to Fisk, a black university, that she found herself among blacks.
She went from place to place till she came to New York in 1912. In time she became part of the Harlem Renaissance.
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Nella Larsen’s life is very interesting to read. She struggled with her racial identity in a world that was and, to the lesser extent, still hostile to Blacks and “Mulattoes” or, in today’s parlance, Biracials. It’s a wonder she accomplished her writing talents by telling the fictional story of two New York women, one opt for White, the other, black. How their lives turned out is very interesting and sad at the same time.
Thanks for saluting this unsung writer of the Harlem Renaissance.
Stephanie B.
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I want to read Passing and all of her books if I can find them.
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Did you know that she was friends with Federico Garcia Lorca? Lorca identified with the plight of Blacks in Harlem, and the two of them were friends when he was visiting Columbia.
Another post topic! Explore the connections between Lorca and African-American literature!
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She was the wife of: “Elmer Samuel Imes (October 12, 1883 – 1941) born in Memphis, Tennessee, was the second African American to earn a Ph.D. in Physics and the first in the 20th century. He was among the first African-American scientists to make important contributions to modern physics.”
“Imes’ research and doctoral thesis led to his publication of Measurements on the Near-Infrared Absorption of Some Diatomic Gases in November 1919 in the Astrophysical Journal. This work was followed by a paper co-authored and presented jointly with Harrison Randall, The Fine Structure of the Near Infra-Red Absorption Bands of HCI, HBr, and HF at the American Physical Society and published in the Physical Review in 1920.[1] His work demonstrated for the first time that Quantum Theory could be applied to radiation in all regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, to the rotational energy states of molecules as well as the vibration and electronic levels. His work provided an early verification of Quantum Theory.[2] [3] [4]
His work was one of the earliest applications of high resolution infrared spectroscopy and provided the first detailed spectra of molecules giving way to the study molecular structure through infrared spectroscopy” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Imes
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