Nella Martin-Zimmerman

Photo Courtesy: Ralph E. Stone 

If Nella Larsen were alive today, she would have worn a hoodie in support of Trayvon Martin, but she would have also sent money to George Zimmerman's defense fund.


Her story would go as follows:


After hearing about the Million Hoodie March on BBC, she turned off the television and went to her closet. She pulled down a box tucked away in a corner behind a layer of winter scarves and placed the box on the blue wing back recliner in her bedroom. She lifted the lid and there it was, under the gray cashmere sweater her cousin handed down to her last winter. 


She remembered purchasing the white hoodie two summers ago when she went on an excursion to Maine. The evenings were chilly, and she often  strolled down the coast at dusk to breathe in the ocean air. She liked the hoodie because the fleece was warm and she could protect her loose flowing hair from the salty breeze. She never forgot being "escorted" back to her guest house by the marine coast patrol one evening when she stopped to sit on a rock by the bay.


"You need to keep moving, lady," said a hefty, red-faced officer. 


She remembered his embarrassment when he discovered she was a guest at one of the private the Longfellow manors and his bumbling, muffled explanation of "drifters vandalizing the shoreline."


She pulled the hoodie out of the box and stood in front of her vanity. As she slipped her arms into the sleeves and casually tossed the hood over her head, she looked at her reflection. She was Trayvon. She studied the sorrow in her face and eyes and reflected on the many years of "misunderstandings" and blatant accusations.


"I'm not a plagiarizer," she whispered as a tear strolled down her cheek.


She carefully took off the hoodie, gently folded it and placed it back in the box on the chair. She turned to her desk and pulled out her credit card as she googled "George Zimmerman." 

 

Sinking Sand

Photo Courtesy: Eddieretalj, deviantART.com

Nella Larsen reveals a dignified yet desperate quest for human equality in her novel Quicksand. 


She tells the story of Helga Crane, who like Larsen, was an American woman of Black and Danish heritage born in a modernist era in which the Harlem Renaissance flourished. 


Helga's mixed heritage is the keystone of the irony underpinning the progressive declarations of both the modernist movement and the "new negro."


Both movements championed changes in literature, architecture and music. Post World War I enthusiasm and technological advancements fostered the enthusiasm for new possibilities. For the white modernist, the changes opened up a boldness in breaking away from social mainstays like realism and religion. For the Black American, it was an opportunity to develop a voice and to establish a status in American culture beyond the pedantic, sub-human servant.


Helga was a product of the basic modernist premise. She was educated. Of course, education was not something uncommon for an affluent, white female and since she was raised by a white mother and had spent time in Europe with her family, she may not have perceived a basic education as something uncommon. For a black person, however, education was valued much differently.


Helga despised the educational  boundaries at Naxos, a school for black students in the south where she taught, because she was exposed to a far superior social experience earlier in life. She knew the students were being groomed to "know their place" in society, even though it may have appeared that they were being offered an equal opportunity.


When Helga brazenly left Naxos and moved to Chicago, she encountered a rude awakening. Unable to endear herself to her uncle's racist wife, Helga had to deal with the fact that her education and affiliation with the finer things in life did not give her any favor with white Americans. She was just black, and by being so, she was not embraced as a family member and found herself wandering the streets fighting to overcome the indignities of hunger and depression.


The cold, detachment of compassion so tightly related to modernism was on display when Helga went to the employment office hoping to find a job as a laborer. And Helga seemed to have no expectation of compassion, but rather an expectation of equality which kept her on edge regardless of her environment.


She eventually made her way to New York, secured a job and was able to stay with a wealthy widow. She adjusted to the high-quality lifestyle as if she was intended to be a recipient of opulence, but she eventually grew restless. Bluntly, she got tired of black people. Just like her uncle's wife, it didn't matter how educated and wealthy they were, they were still black.


She escaped to Europe and was embraced as an exotic curiosity. Helga was a perfect conduit of modernist artistic expression to her European suitor.  Being back on the other side of the cage didn't feel to strange for her at first because she was received with admiration. It didn't take to long for her to realize, however, that "exotic" meant "sexual" and "curiosity" meant "freak." 


Weary with being exploited, she escaped back to America where she found solace in the arms, and bed, of  Reverend Pleasant Green. His name seemed to imply naivete, and Helga basically exploited him in the same way she felt exploited.


Helga Crane never seemed to grasp happiness and personal fulfillment. It seemed as if Larsen wanted people to see the war within a person of mixed heritage. 


Helga's war was the love-hate relationship with both sides of her heritage that never seemed to progress, and one in which the white side of her heritage was trapped with the knowledge that modernist progression was indifferent towards, or simply not intended for the "new negro." 
   

Quest for Status

"Street Life" by William H. Johnson

Nella Larsen's writings emerged at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, a period during the 1920s and '30s when African Americans were encouraged to move to Harlem and write about their life experiences. 


The Harlem Renaissance fit right in with the Modernist movement of the same era which was characterized by releasing traditional forms of literary and artistic expression and embracing progressive ideas.


As a writer, Larsen was certainly in step with the modernist movement because her writings challenged the traditional views of black Americans, particularly black women in society. She was a product of so many different aspects of the American landscape. 


During that time in history, the role of women and blacks in America as subservient and/or unintelligent was being challenged. In Quicksand, Larsen gave readers a glimpse of an intellectual black women. Also, black women were often viewed as highly sexual 'creatures'. Larsen challenged that view, as well, through the development of thoughtful, intelligent and sensitive protagonists like Helga Crane.


Economic status was also a facet of culture that was explored during that period. Black Americans were beginning to explore the idea of wealth and capitalism. The fact that Larsen incorporated her mixed-race heritage into her writings made her viewpoint even more compelling. She saw society through four distinctive lenses: a poor, working-class white family; the wealthy, global elitist white; the lens of the progressive, educated "new negro"; and the lens of the historically poor, subjugated black. 


As a product and recipient of each of those distinctions at various stages of her life, Larsen's writings made it painfully clear that to be white and affluent was still the modernist standard, and the goal of the Harlem Renaissance's new negro.  


Sources:


Dawahare, Anthony. "The Gold Standard of Racial Identity in Nella Larsen's "Quicksand"..."Twentieth Century Literature (Vol.52, No.1). Spring 2006: 22-41. SIRS Renaissance. Web. 24 Apr2012.


"Harlem Renaissance" The Hutchinson Dictionary of the Arts. 2004: n.p. SIRS Renaissance. Web. 24 Apr 2012.


"Modernism (Literature)." SIRS Renaissance. 1998: n.p. SIRS Renaissance. Web. 24 Apr 2012.

Embracing Nella

Photo Courtesy:  George Hutchinson

Nella Larsen lived in an era when American society lacked the capacity to embrace the intricate need of mixed-raced individuals to be seen not as white or as black, but as people. 

People who, through no choice of their own, bore a harmonious physical refinement which was both admired and rejected as a result of dissonant heritages. 


She was born in 1893 to a white mother of Danish origin and a black West Indian father. Her father died when she was very young and her mother later married Peter Larsen, a white man.


She was exposed to a kaleidoscope of experiences because of  her designation as a mixed-raced child in a white family. She understood the perspective of America through the eyes of a working class white family. In spite of her family's social status, her mother was determined to make sure Larsen got a good education.   


Her perspective broadened when she studied at the historically black Fisk University. By then, she was experienced and educated enough to realize the social conventions being patterned at Fisk were limited in their scope. She continued learning at the University of Copenhagen and studied in New York to become a nurse in 1912.


While in New York, Larsen became a literary voice during the glorious period of the Harlem Renaissance. Through her writings, specifically Quicksand and Passings, Larsen was able to give insight into the private pain and somewhat transient existence women of mixed-race lived.


Her writing career was cut short when she was accused of plagiarizing the short story Sanctuary. She removed herself from the public eye and chose to live a simpler, quieter life as a nurse in Manhattan. 
   

Sources:

Hutchinson, George. In Search of Nella Larsen: a biography of the color line,  p. 51. The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2006. 

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 9: Nella Larsen " PAL: Perspectives in American Literature - A Research and Reference Guide. WWW URL: http://web.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap9/larsen.html, November 2011.