Product Overview
Nella Larsen is a central figure in African American, Modernist, and womens literature.
Larsen's status as a Harlem Renaissance woman writer was rivaled by only Zora Neale Hurstons. This Norton Critical Edition of her electrifying 1929 novel includes Carla Kaplans detailed and thought-provoking introduction, thorough explanatory annotations, and a Note on the Text. An unusually rich Background and Contexts section connects the novel to the historical events of the day, most notably the sensational Rhinelander/Jones case of 1925. Fourteen contemporary reviews are reprinted, including those by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Mary Griffin, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Published accounts from 1911 to 1935by Langston Hughes, Juanita Ellsworth, and Caleb Johnson, among othersprovide a nuanced view of the contemporary cultural dimensions of race and passing, both in America and abroad. Also included are Larsens statements on the novel and on passing, as well as a generous selection of her letters and her central writings on The Tragic Mulatto(a) in American literature. Additional perspective is provided by related Harlem Renaissance works. Criticism provides fifteen diverse critical interpretations, including those by Mary Helen Washington, Cheryl A. Wall, Deborah E. McDowell, David L. Blackmore, Kate Baldwin, and Catherine Rottenberg. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
