Quicksand

Library of America presents one of the masterworks of the Harlem Renaissance, the tragic story of a young woman caught between worlds.

Quicksand (1928) turns the techniques of literary naturalism on questions of race, gender, and class, with unforgettable results. Nella Larsen’s immensely stylish debut novel tells the story of sensitive, proud, and beautiful Helga Crane, the daughter (like Larsen herself) of a black West Indian father and a white Danish mother. She has what some would consider a promising career in the South, teaching at “the finest school for Negroes anywhere in the country,” and a respectable fiancé. But she refuses to settle for the loveless future she envisions, hemmed in by petty conformities and the realities of southern racism, black as well… Keep Reading