Born to a white mother and an absent black father, and despised for her
dark skin, Helga Crane has long had to fend for herself. As a young
woman, Helga teaches at an all-black school in the South, but even here
she feels different. Moving to Harlem and eventually to Denmark, she
attempts to carve out a comfortable life and place for herself, but ends
up back where she started, choosing emotional freedom that quickly
translates into a narrow existence.
Quicksand, Nella Larsen's powerful first novel, has intriguing
autobiographical parallels and at the same time invokes the
international dimension of African American culture of the 1920s. It
also evocatively portrays the racial and gender restrictions that can
mark a life.
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