Quicksand: A Classic Harlem Renaissance Novel of Race, Identity, and Belonging - Couverture rigide

Larsen, Nella

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1515432424 ISBN 13 : 9781515432425

Editeur : Wilder Publications, 2023

Synopsis

A powerful novel of restlessness, alienation, race, class, and self-discovery, Quicksand is one of the essential works of the Harlem Renaissance and a landmark of early twentieth-century American fiction.

Helga Crane is intelligent, stylish, proud, and deeply dissatisfied. Moving from a Southern Black college to Chicago, Harlem, Denmark, and back again, she searches for a place where she can live honestly and fully. Yet every world she enters asks her to surrender some part of herself. In the South she feels trapped by respectability and narrow expectations; in Harlem she is frustrated by social performance and racial politics; in Denmark she becomes an exotic object of fascination; and in each new setting she finds that escape does not bring freedom.

First published in 1928, Quicksand explores the psychological cost of living between identities, communities, and expectations. Larsen writes with sharp intelligence and emotional restraint, creating a heroine whose longing for beauty, independence, love, and belonging is constantly undercut by the social realities around her. For readers interested in Harlem Renaissance literature, classic American fiction, women’s writing, African American literature, and novels of interior conflict, Quicksand remains a striking, modern, and deeply affecting work.

About the Author

Nella Larsen (1891–1964) was an American novelist and short story writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Chicago to a Danish mother and a West Indian father, Larsen drew on her own complex experiences of race, class, gender, and cultural belonging in fiction that remains among the most psychologically subtle writing of the period.

Larsen trained as a nurse and later worked as a librarian before turning seriously to fiction. Her two novels, Quicksand and Passing, were published in 1928 and 1929 and quickly established her as one of the most important voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Her work is especially known for its exploration of mixed-race identity, social performance, respectability, desire, and the pressures placed on women navigating both racial and gender expectations.

Although Larsen’s literary career was brief, her influence has grown steadily. Quicksand and Passing are now widely read as major works of American modernism, African American literature, and women’s fiction. Her precise style, restrained emotional force, and unsparing treatment of social constraint have secured her place as one of the defining writers of the early twentieth century.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Nella Larsen (1891-1964) was an American novelist, nurse, librarian, and one of the most significant writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Chicago to a Danish mother and a father of Afro-Caribbean descent, Larsen lived across several cultural worlds, an experience that deeply shaped her fiction's concern with race, class, gender, belonging, passing, respectability, and social exclusion. Her two novels, Quicksand and Passing, are now regarded as major works of twentieth-century American literature and among the most important novels by a Black woman writer of the modernist period.Larsen's fiction is admired for its psychological subtlety, formal restraint, and sharp understanding of the pressures placed on women who move between racial, social, and cultural identities. Quicksand, published in 1928, introduced Helga Crane, a heroine whose restlessness, intelligence, and refusal of easy belonging give the novel its lasting power. Larsen followed it with Passing in 1929, another landmark Harlem Renaissance novel concerned with race, identity, desire, and social performance. Though her literary career was brief, Larsen's work has become central to the study of African American literature, women's writing, Harlem Renaissance fiction, modernism, and classic American fiction.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Wilder Publications
• Date d'édition: 2023
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1515432424
• ISBN 13: 9781515432425
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 99
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Allemagne