![]() After stops at Fisk University in Nashville and the University of Copenhagen, Larsen eventually ended up in Harlem, the place that, thanks to biographical shorthand, would become her historical address. After her mother married a white man, she eventually gave birth to Larsen’s sister, who, when told she had received $35,000 upon Larsen’s death, lied and said she didn’t have a half-sister. Little is known about him, and much of Larsen’s early life was spent mostly submerged in whiteness. Her mother was a white Danish immigrant, and her father was black. Nella Larsen was born in Chicago in 1891. ![]() ![]() ![]() Here is a list of books that flitted through her life. The Harlem Renaissance novelist has faded in and out of focus over the years her life, known in outline with little context left behind-along with the fact that she was a woman writing about women thinking about race-made it easier for history to forget her, although recent years have seen several biographies and an overdue obituary in the New York Times. Rain and books keep time in both of Nella Larsen’s novels, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929) many chapters begin with a note that the day is gray and damp-unless it is winter, when it is gray and cold-and her lonely characters pass the time between sessions of swampy, inescapable introspection about things they intend to ignore, avoid, or leave unsaid by heading to their bookshelves. ![]()
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