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Quicksand book larsen5/23/2023 Tiring of that and suddenly in possession of a small inheritance, she travels to Denmark and stays with her aunt who tricks her out in colourful clothing, offering her to Danish society as an exotic curiosity. Helga rattles straight from her teaching job into a naïve and frantic search for work eventually landing an assignment with a Chicago politician’s widow leading to a job with a New York insurance company. Tired of what she considers to be its smug superiority and emphasis on conformity, she decides to leave despite her engagement, her precarious financial position and any idea of what she might do with her life, impulsively heading for the principal’s study to tell him her decision before boarding the next train for Chicago. She’s a teacher at Naxos, an all-black school in the American South. It opens with a young woman in a gorgeously decorated room contemplating her future. Written in 1928, it’s widely considered to be an autobiographical novel – like the book’s main protagonist, Larsen was the daughter of a Danish mother and a West Indian father – knowledge that makes reading it all the more chilling. They each deserve to be treated separately so I’ll start with Quicksand and save Passing for later. Recently published in a single volume, Quicksand and Passing are the only two novels – well novellas, really – written by Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen.
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