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) 450 copies, 4 reviews
Larsen, Nella Archive 1 copy
زنج 1 copy
Geçiş 1 copy
Associated Works
The Norton Anthology of African American Literature {2nd edition} (2003) — Contributor, some editions — 283 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 — 25 copies, 1 review
The Unforgetting Heart: An Anthology of Short Stories by African American Women, 1859-1993 (1993) — Contributor — 22 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.
- Cause of death
- heart failure
- 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
This is a great, short novel with lots to think about. Passing is obviously central, but the most interesting engagement with passing is Irene’s (i.e., the narrator’s) troubled and doubled relationship to passing: she is critical of Clare’s active passing while being uncritical of her own passive passing.
As I read it, Larsen seems to using passing as a way of being known while being unknown. Although Clare and Irene grew up friends, when Clare passes as white, it is like Irene no show more longer knows Clare as she once did. 12 years have passed but it is more than that. Clare, the friend from her youth, is the known who has become unknown, hidden behind an “ivory mask” that then becomes the surface on which Irene builds a new, faulty understanding of Clare that is influenced by her “white” presence, especially when reflected in her brutish husband’s actions. In so far as I can see Clare clearly through Irene’s eyes, her motives seem like innocent desires to reconnect, but passing seems to have deleted so much of Clare’s presence for Irene that the latter is no longer able to know what she knew of Clare. show less
As I read it, Larsen seems to using passing as a way of being known while being unknown. Although Clare and Irene grew up friends, when Clare passes as white, it is like Irene no show more longer knows Clare as she once did. 12 years have passed but it is more than that. Clare, the friend from her youth, is the known who has become unknown, hidden behind an “ivory mask” that then becomes the surface on which Irene builds a new, faulty understanding of Clare that is influenced by her “white” presence, especially when reflected in her brutish husband’s actions. In so far as I can see Clare clearly through Irene’s eyes, her motives seem like innocent desires to reconnect, but passing seems to have deleted so much of Clare’s presence for Irene that the latter is no longer able to know what she knew of Clare. show less
Written in 1929 during the Harlem Renaissance, Passing by Nella Larsen tells the story of two biracial and light-skinned black women who can pass as white. One, Clare, has married a racist white man who is completely unaware of her past and her identity. Irene, the other, has married a black physician and has no real wish to pass. However when she is tired after a shopping trip, she stops for tea at a whites only tea room where the two women encounter each other. They had grown up in the show more same neighbourhood but haven’t seen each other since childhood until this meeting. The encounter will lead to unexpected and eventually tragic consequences for both women.
Passing is a very short book that packs a huge wallop. It is an intriguing, surprisingly suspenseful, and very insightful book about racial identity and attitudes that still resonates today. There is also an exploration of the tensions that develop between women, between the sexes, and between classes. Irene acts as narrator albeit an untrustworthy one adding a layer of ambiguity to the story and this ambiguity is nowhere more evident than at the end, one that was completely unexpected at least by me. This is not an easy or even a comfortable read but it is an important one and I recommend it highly.
Thanks to Edelweiss+ and Restless Books for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review show less
Passing is a very short book that packs a huge wallop. It is an intriguing, surprisingly suspenseful, and very insightful book about racial identity and attitudes that still resonates today. There is also an exploration of the tensions that develop between women, between the sexes, and between classes. Irene acts as narrator albeit an untrustworthy one adding a layer of ambiguity to the story and this ambiguity is nowhere more evident than at the end, one that was completely unexpected at least by me. This is not an easy or even a comfortable read but it is an important one and I recommend it highly.
Thanks to Edelweiss+ and Restless Books for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review show less
“It’s funny about ‘passing.’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.”
This slim, beautifully written novel is about two women living in New York City in the 1920s. They were childhood friends together. One, Irene Redfield, is a black woman living an affluent life with her husband and children. The second is Clare Kendry, also a black woman but show more “passing” as a white woman. To complicate matters, her white husband is a stone-cold racist. This book was written in 1929 but I had never heard of it until recently. I am glad it landed on my radar. A little gem, that speaks volumes. show less
This slim, beautifully written novel is about two women living in New York City in the 1920s. They were childhood friends together. One, Irene Redfield, is a black woman living an affluent life with her husband and children. The second is Clare Kendry, also a black woman but show more “passing” as a white woman. To complicate matters, her white husband is a stone-cold racist. This book was written in 1929 but I had never heard of it until recently. I am glad it landed on my radar. A little gem, that speaks volumes. show less
This novel is a remarkable story of two early twentieth century African American women who had grown up together but whose lives diverged as they grew up. When a chance encounter brings them together again after a number of years, we learn that one married a black man and became active in the Harlem Renaissance; the other -- who was light-skinned enough to "pass" -- married a white man (a racist one, at that), leaving her heritage and previous identity behind. Can one truly reinvent oneself? show more How succesfully can one construct a self out of nothing? The ending was a shocker. show less
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Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 12
- Also by
- 22
- Members
- 6,140
- Popularity
- #4,010
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 173
- ISBNs
- 184
- Languages
- 8
- Favorited
- 12
