Quicksand
Helga Crane cannot find a place where she belongs. The daughter of a Danish immigrant mother and a Black father, she moves restlessly from a stifling Southern school to Chicago, to the glitter of Harlem, and finally to Copenhagen, where her relatives display her as an exotic novelty. Everywhere she is admired, and everywhere she feels caged, unable to reconcile her hunger for beauty and freedom with the narrow roles a divided society will grant her. Larsen’s 1928 debut is one of the sharpest novels of the Harlem Renaissance, tracing how race, class, and desire close in on a woman who wants only to feel fully herself. This free PDF and EPUB edition makes an overlooked classic available again.
About the Author
Nella Larsen (1891-1964) was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the first African-American women to win serious critical attention as a novelist. Trained as a nurse and librarian, she wrote only two novels, Quicksand and Passing, both probing race, class, and…
See all books by Nella Larsen →
