Quicksand by Nella Larsen - Books

Quicksand

By Nella Larsen Black Literature 01/01/2024

From the acclaimed Harlem Renaissance author of Passing, a novel of one mixed-race woman’s far-reaching quest to discover identity and happiness.

At twenty-three, Helga Crane teaches in 1920s Georgia at one of the country’s finest colleges for African Americans, and she’s engaged to a fellow teacher. Yet happiness eludes her. And when she can’t take the snobbish, conformist atmosphere one second more, she breaks off her relationship with her fiancé and leaves for Illinois. Thus begins a pattern that will define her life, as Helga runs from her hometown of Chicago—where she faces rejection by the Scandinavian half of her family—to Harlem, where she finds understanding and friendship . . . for a while. Falling prey once again to restlessness and insecurity, Helga flees to Europe, where she is accepted with open arms by a wealthy aunt in Copenhagen. There she finds a physical freedom that she never knew existed, only to desperately hunger for the spiritual freedom that she left behind on Harlem’s bustling streets.

Quicksand captures both the strength and fragility of a woman who longs to be herself, and not defined by her race, yet who cannot escape the countless perceptions and expectations of people both Black and White.

“Fine, thoughtful and courageous. It is, on the whole, the best piece of fiction that [Black] America has produced since the heyday of Chesnutt.” —W. E. B. Du Bois

“Quicksand and Passing are novels that I will never forget. They open up a whole world of experience and struggle that seemed to me, when I first read them years ago, absolutely absorbing, fascinating and indispensable.” —Alice Walker, National Book Award–winning author of The Color Purple