Nella Larsen

of historical events which the latter merely details. In that respect, the prudent scholar may learn much about the nature of the struggles of those who are foreigners to conventional white American culture by reading a pair of works of literature, Nella Larsen's Passing and James McBride's The Color of Water. Despite the fact that Larsen's tale is largely fictional whereas McBride's narrative is an autobiographical work based on his life as an African American and his mother's life as a white woman

Though Passing by Nella Larsen and The Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith were created within fifteen years of each other, the two works are vastly different presentations of notions of race in the United States during the first half of the 20th Century. Passing is a short novel that tells its story through the intimacies of everyday life, while Birth of a Nation is an epic film that attempts to tell a large swath of history and significant changes in the United States as a whole. Due to these differences

Nella Larsen’s Passing is a novel set in 1920’s Harlem, New York, concerning two childhood friends, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry. After the result of a chance encounter in their hometown Chicago, Clare and Irene reconnect after twelve years of estrangement. Clare is passing as a white woman and has been for some time as she is married to a white man, John Bellew, who does not know Clare is black. This puzzles Irene, who lives as a free black woman who is true to herself and her background. Irene

of challenging their racial identity, as shown in Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) through the novel’s protagonists Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield. Set in Harlem in the 1920s, Passing centers around Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield. Through the differences in attitude between the two women, Larsen addresses the subtleties of changing identities, or passing. While Irene is at the Drayton she passes for white so she can relax in the hotel lounge (Larsen 13). Irene claims to be proud of her black heritage

is lesser than those around them. At the height of the roaring 20’s this song was of great influence to those striving to achieve more, and can be directly related to the protagonists in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Passing by Nella Larsen. Both novels are set in American 1920’s following two unhappy outsiders-- who believe they deserve more-- and their journey to achieve

within America, being that slavery had only recently been abolished. Society in no way viewed African American’s as equal to white American’s. At this time, blacks were forced to fight to be viewed as a full person, worthy of basic human rights. Nella Larson’s Passing, and Amiri Baraka’s The Dutchman, both call attention to the racial tensions in a post Civil War America, by exposing the manipulation of the endemic racism within our culture, and the effect that it has on the way the African American

construct an image of black female sexuality that shifted responsibility for his own sexual passions onto his female slaves” (37). To reclaim their sexuality, they often created black characters who were deliberately chaste or asexual. Such is the case in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, in which Helga crane is a deliberately unsexual heroine, unable to reconcile her lack of sexuality with society’s expectations of her. In Their Eyes, Janie’s emerging sexual curiosity is initially stifled by Nanny, and then temporarily

During the early 1920s to mid-1930s, the United States went through an appreciable time period called the “Harlem Renaissance”. This time period was the revival of the African American Culture and pride. Originally, the Harlem Renaissance was referred to as the New Negro Movement because it was during this time when the African Americans found their identity through literature, art, music, dance and photography. W.E.B Dubois was an American Civil Rights activist. He was a historian, educator, scholar

Irene’s Desire to “Pass”     The Novel Passing by Nella Larsen, is about a light skinned African American women named Irene who meets her old childhood friend Clare. Clare is also African American, but she passes as white and Irene believes that it is wrong. Clare’s decisions about her race causes a lot of conflicts with her and Irene throughout the novel. Irene struggles with race throughout the novel because she secretly wants to “pass” as white and that is why she is so critical of Clare. In addition

Quicksand describes the struggle of an African American woman’s live. The woman, Helga Crane throughout the whole book never stops moving from one place to another in order to seek her identity and her niche in a “fit” community in which she can become autonomous in sex and free from racial discrimination. Leaving the Southern United States, for Harlem, and then for Denmark-- where she is seemly welcomed by her white relatives live, Crane never finds the feeling of being at home. She is still