Quicksand, Nella Larsen’s first novel (1928), and Passing (1929), enjoyed popularity as ‘uplift novels’ that presented proof that black people were ‘intelligent, refined and morally equal to whites’ (Washington 2007). Larsen’s literary career was brief. Unknown, unread and dismissed, she was able to speak and write clearly to the predicament of middle-class black women. In 1930, Larsen became the first black woman to win a creative writing award from the Guggenheim Foundation and was due to write her third novel. But this was never completed, and she disappeared from the New York literary scene.
At the time of publication, neither Quicksand nor Passing generated the success afforded to Larsen today as one of the central figures of the African-American modernist and feminist literary canons. Indeed, Passing is credited with challenging facets of marriage and middle-class domesticity, interrogating race, gender and sexual identity, and engaging with the traditional literary trope of the tragic mulatta, albeit with a contemporary and critical twist.
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