Editing Nella Larsen (section)

===1928: ''Quicksand''===
{{main|Quicksand (Nella Larsen novel)}}
Helga Crane is a fictional character loosely based on Larsen's experiences in her early life.  Crane is the lovely and refined [[mixed-race]] daughter of a Danish white mother and a West Indian black father.  Her father died soon after she was born. Unable to feel comfortable with her maternal European-American relatives, Crane lives in various places in the United States and visits Denmark, searching for people among whom she feels at home. As writer [[Amina Gautier]] points out, "in a mere 135 pages, Larsen details five different geographical spaces and each space Helga Crane moves to or through alludes to a different stage in her emotional and psychological growth."<ref>Gautier, Amina, [https://www.chipublib.org/blogs/post/guest-blog-writer-amina-gautier-on-nella-larsen], “Nella Larsen’s Chicago,” Chicago Public Library Blog, April 3, 2015. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150927070838/https://www.chipublib.org/blogs/post/guest-blog-writer-amina-gautier-on-nella-larsen/|date=September 27, 2015}}</ref>

Nella Larsen's early life is similar to Helga's in that she was distant from the African-American community, including her African-American family members. Larsen and Helga did not have father figures. Both of their mothers decided to marry a white man with the hope of having a higher social status. Larsen wanted to learn more about her background so she continued to go to school during the Harlem Renaissance. Even though Larsen's early life parallels Helga's, in adulthood, their life choices end up being very different. Nella Larsen pursued a career in nursing while Helga married a preacher and stayed in a very unhappy marriage.<ref name=":1" />

In her travels, she encounters many of the communities that Larsen knew. For example, Crane teaches at Naxos, a Southern Negro boarding school (based on [[Tuskegee University]]), where she becomes dissatisfied with its philosophy. She criticizes a sermon by a white preacher, who advocates the [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregation]] of blacks into separate schools and says their striving for social equality would lead blacks to become avaricious. Crane quits teaching and moves to [[Chicago]]. Her white maternal uncle, now married to a bigoted woman, shuns her. Crane moves to [[Harlem]]<nowiki>, New York, where she finds a refined but often hypocritical black middle class obsessed with the "race problem."</nowiki><ref name="Atlas2018_2">{{Cite web |url=https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/book-reviews/quicksand-nella-larsen-1928/ |title=Quicksand by Nella Larsen (1928) |last=Atlas |first=Nava |date=March 15, 2018 |website=LiteraryLadiesGuide.com |access-date=March 19, 2024 |language=en-US}}</ref>

Taking her uncle's legacy, Crane visits her maternal aunt in [[Copenhagen]]. There she is treated as an attractive racial exotic.<ref name="Wertheim"/> Missing black people, she returns to New York City.  Close to a mental breakdown, Crane happens onto a store-front revival and has a charismatic religious experience. After marrying the preacher who converted her, she moves with him to the rural [[Deep South]]. There she is disillusioned by the people's adherence to religion. In each of her moves, Crane fails to find fulfillment. She is looking for more than how to integrate her mixed ancestry. She expresses complex feelings about what she and her friends consider genetic differences between races.<ref name="Atlas2018_2" />

The novel develops Crane's search for a marriage partner. As it opens, she has become engaged to marry a prominent Southern Negro man, whom she does not really love, but with whom she can gain social benefits. In Denmark she turns down the proposal of a famous white Danish artist for similar reasons, for lack of feeling. By the final chapters, Crane has married a black Southern preacher. The novel's close is deeply pessimistic. Crane had hoped to find sexual fulfillment in marriage and some success in helping the poor Southern blacks she lives among, but instead she has frequent pregnancies and suffering. Disillusioned with religion, her husband, and her life, Crane fantasizes about leaving her husband, but never does. "She sinks into a slough of disillusionment and indifference. She tries to fight her way back to her own world, but she is too weak, and circumstances are too strong."<ref name="Girl">"A Mulatto Girl” [a review of ''Quicksand'' by Nella Larsen], ''The New York Times Book Review,'' April 28, 1928, pp. 16–17.</ref>

The critics were impressed with the novel.<ref name="Wertheim" /> They appreciated her more indirect take on important topics such as race, class, sexuality, and other issues important to the African-American community rather than the explicit or obvious take of other Harlem Renaissance writers.<ref name=":1" /> For example, the ''New York Times'' reviewer found it "an articulate, sympathetic first novel" which demonstrated an understanding that "a novelist's business is primarily with individuals and not with classes."<ref name="Girl"/> The novel also won Larsen a bronze prize (second place) for literature in 1928 from the [[William E. Harmon Foundation]].<ref name="Johnson2007">{{cite web |url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/larsen-nella-1891-1963/ |title=Nella Larsen (1891-1963) |website=[[BlackPast.org]] |last=Johnson |first=Doris Richardson |date=19 January 2007 |access-date=19 March 2024}}</ref>