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Voice of the Harlem Renaissance: A Profile of Nella Larsen |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / WRITERS AND WRITING |
| Author: Charles R. Larson |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 2/1/2000 |
| Size: 1,690 Words, 10,301 Characters |
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By the end of the 1980s, literary sleuths were beginning to set the record aright. In most instances what was revealed was the benign neglect of black writers after the Harlem Renaissance. A more startling fact: Yes, indeed, even in the twentieth century it has been possible for a number of America's artists (black, white; male, female; writer, painter) to live lives of quiet obscurity--even when invisibility is not forced upon them by the dominant culture.
Larsen's novels were available for the general reader, even if the facts of her life were not. A new generation of African-American women writers identified her as one of their literary ancestors, as they had also embraced the works and career of Zora Neale Hurston, most famous for Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Yet facts were known about Hurston (who also died in obscurity) well after the end of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston's major works were published during the 1930s. And she left more footprints than Larsen did, though she, too, suffered from obs...
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...an anything else because she has come to accept that she belongs in neither world. And Clare Kendry in Passing is literally murdered because she's lived as a white person and tragically discovers that she'd rather be black. For Nella Larsen and other writers of the Harlem Renaissance, black was beautiful, even though the characters they often wrote about had yet to make a similar realization.
(1,036 of 10,301 characters)
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
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Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
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