Alice Walker
"Quicksand and Passing are novels I will never forget. They open up a whole world of experience and struggle that seemed to me, when I first read them years ago, absolutely absorbing, fascinating, and indispensable."


Women's Studies International Forum
"A tantalizing mix of moral fable and sensuous colorful narrative, exploring female sexuality and racial solidarity."


Joyce Carol Oates
"This series is an ambitious, exciting, and highly valuable contribution to the reclamation of American women's lost literature."


From the Back Cover
Nella Larsen's novels Quicksand(1928) and Passing(1929) document the historical realities of Harlem in the 1920s and shed a bright light on the social world of the black bourgeoisie. The novel's greatest appeal and achievement, however, is not sociological, but psychological. As noted in the editor's comprehensive introduction, Larsen takes the them of psychic dualism, so popular in Harlem Renaissance fiction, to a higher and more complex level, displaying a sophisticated understanding and penetrating analysis of black female psychology.


About the Author
Deborah E. McDowell is Professor of English at the University of Virgina.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Nella Larsen's novels Quicksand(1928) and Passing(1929) document the historical realities of Harlem in the 1920s and shed a bright light on the social world of the black bourgeoisie. The novel's greatest appeal and achievement, however, is not sociological, but psychological. As noted in the editor's comprehensive introduction, Larsen takes the them of psychic dualism, so popular in Harlem Renaissance fiction, to a higher and more complex level, displaying a sophisticated understanding and penetrating analysis of black female psychology.

A tantalizing mix of moral fable and sensuous colorful narrative, exploring female sexuality and racial solidarity.—Women's Studies International Forum

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

This series is an ambitious, exciting, and highly valuable contribution to the reclamation of American women's lost literature. — Joyce Carol Oates