47 Facts About Nella Larsen

Nella Larsen was born Nellie Walker, in a poor district of south Chicago known as the Levee, on April 13,1891.

Nella Larsen's mother was Pederline Marie Hansen, an ethnically Danish immigrant, probably born in 1868, possibly in Schleswig-Holstein.

Nella Larsen died in 1951 in Santa Monica, Los Angeles County.

Nella Larsen's father was Peter Walker, believed to be a mixed-race Afro-Caribbean immigrant from the Danish West Indies.

When Nella Larsen was eight years old, they moved a few blocks back east.

From 1895 to 1898, Nella Larsen lived in Denmark with her mother and her half-sister.

Nella Larsen's mother believed that education could give Larsen an opportunity and supported her in attending Fisk University, a historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee.

Biographer George B Hutchinson established that Larsen was expelled, along with ten other women, inferring that this was for some violation of Fisk's strict dress or conduct codes for women.

Nella Larsen went on her own to Denmark, where she lived for a total of three years, between 1909 and 1912, and attended the University of Copenhagen.

In 1914, Nella Larsen enrolled in the nursing school at New York City's Lincoln Hospital and Nursing Home.

Nella Larsen returned to New York in 1916, where she worked for two years as a nurse at Lincoln Hospital.

Nella Larsen worked for them in the Bronx through the 1918 flu pandemic, in "mostly white neighborhoods" and with white colleagues.

In 1919, Nella Larsen married Elmer Imes, a prominent physicist; he was the second African American to earn a PhD in physics.

However, because of her low birth and mixed parentage, and because she did not have a college degree, Nella Larsen was alienated from the black middle class, whose members emphasized college and family ties, and black fraternities and sororities.

In 1921, Nella Larsen worked nights and weekends as a volunteer with librarian Ernestine Rose, to help prepare for the first exhibit of "Negro art" at the New York Public Library.

Nella Larsen worked her first year as a librarian at the Seward Park Branch on the Lower East Side, which was predominantly Jewish.

They, and another branch supervisor where she worked, supported Nella Larsen and helped integrate the staff of the branches.

Nella Larsen transferred to the Harlem branch, as she was interested in the cultural excitement in the African-American neighborhood, a destination for migrants from across the country.

In October 1925, Nella Larsen took a sabbatical from her job for health reasons and began to write her first novel.

In 1926, having made friends with important figures in the Negro Awakening, Nella Larsen gave up her work as a librarian.

Nella Larsen became a writer active in Harlem's interracial literary and arts community, where she became friends with Carl Van Vechten, a white photographer and writer.

In 1930, Nella Larsen published "Sanctuary", a short story for which she was accused of plagiarism.

Nella Larsen herself said the story came to her as "almost folk-lore", recounted to her by a patient when she was a nurse.

Nella Larsen received a Guggenheim Fellowship even in the aftermath of the controversy, worth roughly $2,500 at the time, and was the first African-American woman to do so.

Nella Larsen used it to travel to Europe for several years, spending time in Mallorca and Paris, where she worked on a novel about a love triangle in which all the protagonists were white.

Nella Larsen never published the book or any other works.

Nella Larsen returned to New York in 1937, when her divorce had been completed.

Nella Larsen was given a generous alimony in the divorce, which gave her the financial security she needed until Imes's death in 1941.

Nella Larsen lived on the Lower East Side and did not venture to Harlem.

For Nella Larsen, nursing was a "labor market that welcomed an African American as a domestic servant".

When Nella Larsen graduated in 1915, it was Adah Thoms who had made arrangements for Nella Larsen to work at Tuskegee Institute's hospital.

Nella Larsen describes Brian as being ambivalent about his work in the medical field.

Nella Larsen died in her Brooklyn apartment in 1964, at the age of 72.

Nella Larsen was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in 2022.

Nella Larsen was an acclaimed novelist, who wrote stories in the midst on the Harlem Renaissance.

Nella Larsen is most known for her two novels, Quicksand and Passing; these two pieces of work got much recognition with positive reviews.

Many believed that Nella Larsen was a rising star as an African American novelist, until she soon after left Harlem, her fame, and writing behind.

Nella Larsen is often compared to other authors who wrote about cultural and racial conflict such as Claude Mckay and Jean Toomer.

Nella Larsen's works are viewed as strong pieces that well represent mixed-race individuals and the struggles with identity that some inevitably face.

Nella Larsen's novel Passing was adapted as a 2021 film of the same name by Rebecca Hall.

Nella Larsen wanted to learn more about her background so she continued to go to school during the Harlem Renaissance.

Nella Larsen pursued a career in nursing while Helga married a preacher and stayed in a very unhappy marriage.

Nella Larsen criticizes a sermon by a white preacher, who advocates the segregation of blacks into separate schools and says their striving for social equality would lead blacks to become avaricious.

Nella Larsen is looking for more than how to integrate her mixed ancestry.

Nella Larsen expresses complex feelings about what she and her friends consider genetic differences between races.

Nella Larsen tries to fight her way back to her own world, but she is too weak, and circumstances are too strong.

Nella Larsen ends the novel without revealing if Clare committed suicide, if Irene or her husband pushed her, or if it was an accident.