Nella Larsen

Nella Larsen's Passing has been the main topic in class this week. Larsen appears to be an interesting author and I really liked the idea of a writer discussing such an event as a black woman passing herself off as a white woman. Those individuals who did this must have been desperate to fit it, which might explain why Clare was such a wreck and never truly happy. I found out that Larsen was an American novelist and short story writer famously associated with the Harlem Renaissance era, which one writer has called "an era of extraordinary acheivement in black American art and literature areas during the 1920's and 1930's." Nella Larsen's appearance was much like that of Homer Plessy, a civil rights activist, who was seven eights white and one eights black. Plessy believed that he should be entitled to all the rights and privileges of a white citizen. As a result, Plessy took his case to the Supreme Court which ruled for "separate but equal public facilities and institutions for non-white citizens." Nella was a light skinned black women with limp hair and white facial features. Nella Larsen was born on April 13,1891, in Chicago and died on March 30,1964. http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/386/nlarsen.html