Nella Larsen

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Nella Larsen in 1928

Nella Larsen (* 13. April 1891 in Chicago , Illinois ; † 30th March 1964 in New York City , New York ), pseudonyms Nellie Walker, Nellye Larson, Nellie Larsen , was an African-American writer that the literary movement of the Harlem Renaissance belonged .

Life

Nella Larsen, born as Nellie Walker, was the daughter of the Danish tailor Marie Hanson Walker and of Saint Croix- born Peter Walker. Her Afro-Caribbean father faked his death in 1893 and, in the new identity as the white Peter Larsen, took a job on the railroad in Chicago . Starting in the winter semester of 1907, Nella Larsen studied for three years in Nashville at Fisk University , which was founded in 1866 for black students.

From 1910 to 1912, she said she continued studying at the University of Copenhagen , a claim that some scholars have questioned as no other evidence could be found. Then Nella Larsen completed a training as a nurse at New York's Lincoln Hospital. After graduation in 1915, she moved to Tuskegee, Alabama , where she was promoted to head nurse and taught at the nursing school. She found the educational theses of Booker T. Washington , in which she was briefly interested, unconvincing.

In 1916 she returned to New York. On May 3, 1919, Nella Larsen and the physicist Elmer Imes married . The marriage ended in divorce in 1933. In 1920 Nella Larsen began to write and published an article about children's games in Denmark in the children's magazine The Brownies' Book . In 1922 she turned to a new field of work for health reasons and became a librarian . During this time there was an intensive examination of literature, especially with James Joyce , John Galsworthy , Walter Francis White and Carl Van Vechten .

In 1926 she met writers from the Harlem Renaissance . These included James Weldon Johnson , Jessie Fauset , Georgia Douglas Johnson , Jean Toomer and Langston Hughes . Walter White and Van Vechten arranged contacts with the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house .

She gave up her job in order to dedicate herself to writing. Her first, autobiographical novel Quicksand was published in 1928 . For this, Nella Larsen received the Harmon Foundation Prize. Passing , her second novel , was published in 1929 .

In 1930, Larsen published the short story Sanctuary , which earned her the allegation of plagiarism because it had similarities to the short story Mrs. Adis by British author Sheila Kaye-Smith. Although the allegations later turned out to be unfounded, they were enough for her to withdraw from the literary scene. A trip through Europe financed by a Guggenheim scholarship to provide material for a third novel went unpublished. The Guggenheim Scholarship was the foundation's first award for an African American woman. Larsen resumed working as a nurse in 1933.

position

Although the complete works of Nella Larsen only contain two novels and a few short stories , she is one of the well-known American authors: Her novels deal with the problem of racial segregation in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. Her first novel, Quicksand , tells the story of Helga Crane. The protagonist is modeled after the author: the novel describes the efforts of the daughter of a Danish mother and a black father to find a place in life and her struggles with the black civil rights movement.

Passing is the story of two women who are considered to be 'mixed race', although both are fair enough not to be recognized as black (English passing , i.e. "going through as white"). While one internalizes her 'white' identity completely and marries a wealthy 'white' from whom she conceals her ancestry, the other moves to Harlem , shapes her identity as black, marries a black doctor and enthusiastically takes part in the civil rights movement. The second part of the novel deals with the reunion of the two childhood friends, and the admiration each of them pays for the other's lifestyle. Nevertheless, the novel ends tragically: Clare, who lives as a 'white', is 'exposed' to her husband and appears to commit suicide.

Larsen's novel has played a major role in shaping the sociological and literary theoretical concept of " passing, " not being recognized as part of a minority , and has therefore achieved canonical status at American universities. The concept is also being negotiated again in recent American novels, such as Philip Roth's novel The Human Blemish (2000).

Nella Larson was included in the Daughters of Africa anthology , edited in 1992 by Margaret Busby in London and New York.

Works

  • Quicksand . Knopf, New York / London, 1928; Quicksand - authoritative text, backgrounds and contexts, criticism  ; edited by Carla Kaplan, New York: WW Norton & Company, [2020], ISBN 978-0-393-93242-3
  • Passing . Knopf, New York / London, 1929, Passing: authoritative text, backgrounds and contexts criticism , Ed. by Carla Kaplan, New York, NY [u. a.]: Norton, c 2007, ISBN 978-0-393-97916-9
  • Charles R. Larson (Ed.): An intimation of things distant:: the collected fiction of Nella Larsen , New York [u. a.]: Anchor Books, 1992, ISBN 0-385-42149-4

literature

  • Joanne M. Peters: Nella Larsen 1891-1964 . Contemporary Authors Volume 125. Detroit (Gale Research, Inc.) 1989
  • Thadious M. Davis: Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman's Life Unveiled . Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1994, ISBN 0-8071-1866-4
  • Jacquelyn Y. MacLendon: The politics of color in the fiction of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen . Charlottesville (Univ. Press of Virginia) 1995, ISBN 0-8139-1553-8
  • sv Nella Larsen in the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture & History , Volume 3. New York (Simon and Schuster) 1996
  • George Hutchison: In Search of Nella Larson. A Biography of the Color Line . Cambridge / Massachusetts (Belknap Press) 2006

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biographical data from Nella Larsen in "The Greenwood encyclopedia of African American civil rights: from ...:" Volume 1, by Charles D. Lowery, John F. Marszalek, Thomas Adams Upchurch, 2003, p. 296
  2. ↑ Sushama Austin: Nella Larsen - Discovering Parallels to Nella Larsen . See web link.
  3. ↑ Extravagant Crowd: Carl van Vechten's Portraits of Women: Nella Larsen There it says literally: “Though Larsen stated that she lived in Denmark as a teenager and that she returned to that country to attend the University of Copenhagen, some scholars argue that there is no documentary evidence to support these claims. "
  4. ^ Kelli A. Larson: Surviving the taint of plagiarism: Nella Larsen's "Sanctuary" and Sheila Kaye-Smith's "Mrs. Adis". In: Journal of Modern Literature 30. 2007,4, pp. 82-104
  5. ^ Nella Larsen in John Simon Guggenheim, Memorial Foundation
personal data
SURNAME Larsen, Nella
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Walker, Nella; Walker, Nellie; Larson, Nellye; Larsen, Nellie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION African American writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1964
Place of death New York City , New York (State)