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Nella Larsen - Complexion and Complexities

© Dorothy Harris

Nella Larsen, 1891-1964, was a writer of the Harlem Renaissance era, an era in which African American Art was at a major height. Many African American artists, receiving hope for support and an audience for their work, moved to large cities to become part of a movement which held promises for their future. This era, the 1920s-30s, was also an era of definition and perhaps redefinition of Africans in America. Hughes wrote, "I too sing America" while Hurston wrote, "How it Feels to be Colored Me." This self-definition was for both the African American populations as well as for their white audiences. While white patrons expected African American artists to define their cultures and lives in limited ways - i.e., within the confines of white stereotypes, African American artists were not necessarily interested in compromising their work to meet white's requirements.

While many artists constructed work which defined or attempted to describe African Americans' experiences and/or places in American society, Larsen worked hard to construct the work of those who do not fit into the African American or the European American societies. Larsen's novels, QUICKSAND (1928) and PASSING (1929) both focused on women who were both African American and European, and who, as such, never found a place for themselves in this society.

Larsen, in these novels, conveys how difficult the lives of these characters were in an era in which people found connections in African American and European American societies. According to Larsen's texts, her middle class protagonists would not have fit comfortably into any of the systems because they were both black and white, and consequently, neither black nor white.

Larsen uses her texts to criticize both African American and European American communities, showing that both communities are oppressive to her characters because of their ethnicity, or (as the characters may imply) lack of.

Both novels criticize Black middle class notions of the time, while also criticizing superficial white intentions. She moves her characters through experiences and circles of the privileged and the un-privileged, allowing them to become social commentators of their experiences in their era.

She also, and most importantly, explores the interconnection of sexism, racism, classism in African American and in European American communities, exposing the multiple jeopardy of women of color, and of bi-racial women of her era.

Both novels have tragic endings; both give messages of hopelessness for her characters in an era in which they would never find a place.