Nella Larsen, one of the most acclaimed and influential writers of
the Harlem Renaissance, was born Nellie Walker in Chicago on April
13, 1891. Her father was mixed-race, her mother was a Danish
immigrant, and she struggled to find a community to which to
belong. After working for some years as a nurse, primarily in the
Bronx, Larsen became the first black woman to graduate from the New
York Public Library School and worked in various branches before
landing in Harlem, the center of African-American culture. She
became active in Harlem's artistic community and wrote her first
novel, Quicksand, published in 1928. A critical though not
financial success, it was awarded a Bronze Medal by the Harmon
Foundation in recognition of Distinguished Achievement Among
Negroes in Literature. Her second novel,Passing,came out the
following year. Larsen was the first African-American woman to
receive the Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing. Due to
personal and professional struggles following a highly publicized
divorce, Larsen had stopped writing by the end of the 1930s. She
resumed work as a nurse until her death in 1964.
Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from
Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the
University of Michigan. Her debut novel The Mothers was a New York
Times bestseller, and her second novel The Vanishing Half was an
instant #1 New York Times bestseller. She is a National Book
Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and in 2021, she was chosen as one of
Time's Next 100 Influential People. Her essays have been featured
in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review,
and Jezebel.
Praise for Nella Larsen and Passing
“It is a tragic story rooted in inescapable facts of American life:
that whiteness conferred an almost universal unearned advantage,
and that loyalty to a Black racial identity was not only an act of
pride but also one of courage.”—The New York Times
“[Larsen’s novels] open up a whole world of experience and struggle
that seemed to me, when I first read them years ago, absolutely
absorbing, fascinating, and indispensable.”—Alice Walker
“One of the best novels of the year.”—W.E.B. DuBois, The
Crisis Magazine, Issue 36 (July 1929)
Ask a Question About this Product More... |