Essay Examen
Essay Examen
Essay Examen
This author is
very important for the Harlem Renaissance as she explored both cross-cultural and interracial
themes.
[BIOGRAPHY] Nella Larsen was born in 1981 in a poor village of Chicago. Her parents were a
mixed Afro-Caribbean immigrant and a Danish immigrant. The mixed family went to the West
of Chicago but they suffered discrimination. Larsen´s mother supported her to go to the
University of Fisk in Tennessee which was historically of black people and that was the first
time Nella lived in an African American community, however, she was still separated because
of her origin regarding the rest of students. In 1914 she worked as a nurse in different places,
in this aspect she could also see some racist behaviour. In 1920 Larsen and her husband moved
to Harlem where the majority of African Americans were investigating and underlining their
black inheritance. In 1923 she worked as a librarian in Harlem because she was interested in
the cultural effervescence of the African American neighbourhood where there were
immigrants from all over the world. She started to write in 1925 and in 1926 she stablished
connections with important figures of the Harlem Renaissance. She published “Quicksand” in
1928 and “Passing” in 1929. She also wrote some short stories. She died in Brooklyng in 1964.
[SUMMARY AND GENRE] “Quicksand” is about a young mixed-race girl, Helga Crane, who
spends her life moving to new places trying to find somewhere to fit in. After living in Harlem
for a while, she moved to Denmark where she discovers her family exoticized blackness. The
novel is autobiographical and belongs to the Renaissance Literary Movement during the
Harlem Renaissance.
[THEMES] We can find four main themes in the novel. Firstly, we can mention the voyage
Helga goes through as the protagonist struggles to find herself and her place in society, this is
extended across the four cities we see her travel between. In the second place, we can talk
about discrimination as Larsen uses race to discuss social inequality; she also features class in
order to accentuate the struggles African Americans and mixed-race faced in local, national
and global scales. Thirdly, exoticism, as Helga´s aunt uses her niece to show her off around
Copenhagen to elevate her own status, we see Helga externally and internally battles
stereotypes of racism and exoticism projected by white America and Europe upon those of
African descent. Finally, the internal conflict of Helga as she struggles with her personal
absence of cultural and historical definition.
[SYMBOLISM] Regarding symbolism, Nella Larsen belongs to the period of the Harlem
Renaissance (1918-1937) which was the most influential cultural movement in African
American literary history. The movement gave the basis for all later African American literature
and consciousness worldwide. Harlem was a motivation for artistic experimentation and a
highly popular nightlife destination. Its location helped give the “New Negroes” visibility and
opportunities for publication not evident elsewhere. Located just north of Central Park, Harlem
was a formerly white residential district but by the early 1920s there were more black people
than whites.
[CONCLUSION] We can conclude that the novel stands out most about the reflections on the
black-white conflict. “Quicksand” is a mix of internal conflict, racial solidarity, and
discrimination for being of mixed-race. To discover Larsen is to enjoy both her biography and
her writings.