Nella Larsen (1891–1964)
Author of Passing
About the Author
Nella Larsen was associated with the Harlem Renaissance. She also worked as a librarian and a nurse in New York City, pursuing nursing after her brief, successful writing career until her death in 1964. Larsen's mother was Danish, and her father was West Indian; she used her experience as the child show more of middle-class parents in a mixed marriage to create characters in two novels who are stranded, caught between two cultures and unable to feel wholly at home in either. In each of Larsen's novels, the heroine suffers suffocating constrictions of her identity in both African American and white European culture. These crises in both Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929) are further complicated by the heroine's quest for sexual as well as social identity, and both novels end without hopeful resolution. Both contain autobiographical elements, but Quicksand, the more successful, reproduced in fictional form many of the circumstances of Larsen's own early life. Although her work had been out of print for many years, she has recently been rediscovered. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by Nella Larsen
The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and The Stories (1992) 449 copies, 4 reviews
Short Fiction 2 copies
Larsen, Nella Archive 1 copy
Associated Works
The Norton Anthology of African American Literature {2nd edition} (2003) — Contributor, some editions — 282 copies, 2 reviews
Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present (1992) — Contributor — 186 copies
Calling the Wind: Twentieth Century African-American Short Stories (1992) — Contributor — 116 copies
Harlem Renaissance Novels: the Library of America Collection: (Two-volume boxed set) (2011) — Contributor — 55 copies, 1 review
Revolutionary Tales: African American Women's Short Stories, from the First Story to the Present (1995) — Contributor — 54 copies
Centers of the Self: Stories by Black American Women, from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (1994) — Contributor — 31 copies
Women of the Harlem Renaissance (Macmillan Collector's Library) (2022) — Contributor — 24 copies, 1 review
The Unforgetting Heart: An Anthology of Short Stories by African American Women, 1859-1993 (1993) — Contributor — 23 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Imes, Nella (married)
- Birthdate
- 1891-04-13
- Date of death
- 1964-03-30
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Fisk University
- Occupations
- novelist
short story writer
nurse
librarian - Awards and honors
- Guggenheim Fellowship (1930)
- Short biography
- Nella Larsen was born in Chicago to a black father and a white Danish emigrant mother. Her father died when she was young and her mother remarried and had another daughter. Most of the rest of her early life is unknown. She trained as a nurse and as a librarian, and married Elmer Imes, a physicist then living in New York City. She became a celebrated novelist and writer of the Harlem Renaissance, beginning with her 1928 novel, Quicksand. It was followed by Passing (1929). The couple were members of a circle of professionals, intellectuals, and artists that included Langston Hughes and W.E.B. Du Bois. Nella Larsen won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1930, intending to write more novels, but never did. By 1938, she and her husband were divorced and she was no longer in touch with her friends or her publishers. She took nursing jobs beginning in 1944 and lived a solitary life for the next 20 years until her death.
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Chicago, Illinois, USA
- Places of residence
- Chicago, Illinois, USA (birth)
New York, New York, USA (death)
Denmark - Place of death
- New York, New York, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- New York, USA
Members
Discussions
6. Passing by Nella Larsen in Backlisted Book Club (March 2022)
Group Read, August 2020: Passing in 1001 Books to read before you die (August 2020)
Reviews
Nella Larsen’s use of color in “Passing” is apropos since it’s a story about different women who can racially pass as white and the attendant problems of identity within different social circles. It’s also the first time the two main characters have met in years. The idea of passing could also refer to marital infidelity or transitory relationships or, simply, the brief glimpse a person may get of themselves —that moment of stark lucidity before the mirror. There’s a lot going show more on here. But the author’s use of color is as beautiful, original and evocative as it is pervasive.
“Brilliant red patches flamed in Irene Redfield’s warm olive cheeks.”
“A waiter passed her, followed by a sweetly scented woman in a fluttering dress of green chiffon whose mingled pattern of narcissuses, jonquils, and hyacinths was a reminder of pleasantly chill spring days.”
“Irene watched her spread out her napkin, saw the silver spoon in the white hand slit the dull gold of the melon.”
“Entering, Irene found herself in a sitting room, large and high, at whose windows hung startling blue draperies which triumphantly dragged attention from the gloomy chocolate-colored furniture. And Clare was wearing a thin floating dress of the same shade of blue, which suited her and the rather difficult room to perfection.”
“A pale rose color came into Clare’s ivory cheeks.”
“Clare, exquisite, golden, fragrant, in a stately gown of shining black taffeta, whose long, full skirt lay in graceful folds about her slim golden feet; her glistening hair drawn smoothly back into a small twist at the nape of her neck; her eyes sparkling like dark jewels. Irene, with her new rose-colored chiffon frock ending at the knees, and her cropped curls, felt dowdy and commonplace.”
“Clare fair and golden, like a sunlit day. Hazelton dark, with gleaming eyes, like a moonlit night.”
“Irene couldn’t remember ever having seen her look better. She was wearing a superlatively simple cinnamon-brown frock which brought out all her vivid beauty, and a little golden bowl of a hat. Around her neck hung a string of amber beads that would easily have made six or eight like one Irene owned. Yes, she was stunning.”
“The day was an exceptionally cold one, with a strong wind that had whipped a dusky red into Felise’s smooth golden cheeks and driven moisture into Irene’s soft brown eyes.”
OK, so I know that’s a lot to drop in an FB post, but that’s the power color has in this book. It’s a cumulative power. And all that paint builds up like impasto and makes you aware of each individual line in the brush strokes. The pain, the jealousy, the struggles, the frustration, the awe, the heartbreak—it’s all in there. Layers upon layers of gorgeously tormented meetings in the passing between humans. From race to race, sex to sex, social class to class, we all leave our thick lines in the paint. Will it compliment or contrast our idea of our own existence when we see it—when we happen upon that glimpse in the passing?
“Her whole body went taut. In that second she saw that she could bear anything, but only if no one knew that she had anything to bear. It hurt. It frightened her, but she could bear it.”
Goddamnit, Nella Larsen. You wrote a book that will have a far greater effect on me than the title would otherwise suggest. show less
“Brilliant red patches flamed in Irene Redfield’s warm olive cheeks.”
“A waiter passed her, followed by a sweetly scented woman in a fluttering dress of green chiffon whose mingled pattern of narcissuses, jonquils, and hyacinths was a reminder of pleasantly chill spring days.”
“Irene watched her spread out her napkin, saw the silver spoon in the white hand slit the dull gold of the melon.”
“Entering, Irene found herself in a sitting room, large and high, at whose windows hung startling blue draperies which triumphantly dragged attention from the gloomy chocolate-colored furniture. And Clare was wearing a thin floating dress of the same shade of blue, which suited her and the rather difficult room to perfection.”
“A pale rose color came into Clare’s ivory cheeks.”
“Clare, exquisite, golden, fragrant, in a stately gown of shining black taffeta, whose long, full skirt lay in graceful folds about her slim golden feet; her glistening hair drawn smoothly back into a small twist at the nape of her neck; her eyes sparkling like dark jewels. Irene, with her new rose-colored chiffon frock ending at the knees, and her cropped curls, felt dowdy and commonplace.”
“Clare fair and golden, like a sunlit day. Hazelton dark, with gleaming eyes, like a moonlit night.”
“Irene couldn’t remember ever having seen her look better. She was wearing a superlatively simple cinnamon-brown frock which brought out all her vivid beauty, and a little golden bowl of a hat. Around her neck hung a string of amber beads that would easily have made six or eight like one Irene owned. Yes, she was stunning.”
“The day was an exceptionally cold one, with a strong wind that had whipped a dusky red into Felise’s smooth golden cheeks and driven moisture into Irene’s soft brown eyes.”
OK, so I know that’s a lot to drop in an FB post, but that’s the power color has in this book. It’s a cumulative power. And all that paint builds up like impasto and makes you aware of each individual line in the brush strokes. The pain, the jealousy, the struggles, the frustration, the awe, the heartbreak—it’s all in there. Layers upon layers of gorgeously tormented meetings in the passing between humans. From race to race, sex to sex, social class to class, we all leave our thick lines in the paint. Will it compliment or contrast our idea of our own existence when we see it—when we happen upon that glimpse in the passing?
“Her whole body went taut. In that second she saw that she could bear anything, but only if no one knew that she had anything to bear. It hurt. It frightened her, but she could bear it.”
Goddamnit, Nella Larsen. You wrote a book that will have a far greater effect on me than the title would otherwise suggest. show less
This is the kind of book that stays with you; the kind where you turn the page and hope for more, even though you know it's done. It's the kind of book where you need to take a minute because it hurts a little. There are no heroes here, just people trying to do what they think is best, with disastrous results.
Quicksand was a fascinating depiction of a woman who can't fit in. Much like Nella Larsen herself, Helga Crane is a black woman, brought up unhappily in a white family (her mother is white, her black father is no longer around, and her mother has remarried a white man). Some of the references to her childhood were heartbreaking, knowing that Larsen was writing from her life. Helga Crane is not a very likeable character - far too prickly and difficult - but a fascinating character.
Helga finds show more it difficult to fit in with white people (with her obviously black ancestry), but also finds it difficult to fit into the black community. She has a fascinating friendship with a black woman, Anne, who is very concerned with the "race issue" (which I think is one of those very multi-faceted issues, because I couldn't pin it down to one particular aspect!). This lack of being able to identify with other people, for Helga, leads to her tragic ending. show less
Helga finds show more it difficult to fit in with white people (with her obviously black ancestry), but also finds it difficult to fit into the black community. She has a fascinating friendship with a black woman, Anne, who is very concerned with the "race issue" (which I think is one of those very multi-faceted issues, because I couldn't pin it down to one particular aspect!). This lack of being able to identify with other people, for Helga, leads to her tragic ending. show less
Quick, tightly written piece that reminded me of Katherine Mansfield, with a well-rendered mix of interior struggles, interpersonal cruelty, and a thoughtful exploration of the intricacies of racial identity in America. A breezy read that is never unengaging, though the ending wraps up in a sort of pat and typical fashion that is neither satisfying nor surprising. I'm am surprised that I never read this in high school or college (read a good share of Harlem Renaissance literature), I'm glad show more to see it is getting some well-deserved attention recently. I listened to the Tessa Thompson-read audiobook and her delivery was expert and nuanced. show less
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Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 11
- Also by
- 22
- Members
- 6,077
- Popularity
- #4,050
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 172
- ISBNs
- 184
- Languages
- 8
- Favorited
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