George Hutchinson is Professor of English and Newton C. Farr Professor of American Culture at Cornell University.
In Search of Nella Larsen is a true challenge to conventional
wisdom; there is no book like it in existence. The readings of
Larsen's two novels make the case that she deserves to be
reevaluated and considered the major Harlem Renaissance novelist of
the 1920s.
*Werner Sollors, author of Neither Black nor White yet Both
and Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English and
Afro-American Studies at Harvard University*
This biography of Nella Larsen, as much a cultural biography of
Larsen's times as it is a story of her life, is a labor of love. It
is extraordinarily well researched, comprehensive, and certain to
be regarded, henceforth, as the definitive biography of Larsen's
life. Larsen is a central figure for African Americanists,
feminists, Americanists, and those interested in the Harlem
Renaissance. In arguing that literary studies has worked to
reinforce a black/white, either/or binary, this book complicates
our picture of both Larsen and the Harlem Renaissance. And, perhaps
most importantly for readers outside the Larsen/ Harlem Renaissance
circle, this book complicates our picture of racialized America by
focusing on the cultural erasure of biraciality and by making vivid
what that erasure has cost, not only for biracial Americans, but
all of us. This is a major book. It will be widely read, widely
discussed, and highly influential. It is, in every way, a big
book.
*Carla Kaplan, author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in
Letters and Professor of English at the University of Southern
California*
This book is above all, about how one reconstructs a life when
there's little evidence but the life is important; and how one does
so when that person was, in addition, an African-American woman who
flourished during a crucial era--the Harlem Renaissance--before
vanishing in broad daylight, as it were. Other biographers have
constructed their own intriguing accounts, but they did so without
the seminal facts now available to us. This excellent biography,
building on those accounts but also bold, fresh, and original,
tells the story of a writer who was in her mind neither black nor
white and who lived much of her time feeling like a shadow, but who
created invaluable art out of her pain.
*Arnold Rampersad, Sara Hart Kimball Professor of the Humanities,
Stanford University, and author of the two-volume Life of
Langston Hughes*
George Hutchinson has delivered a definitive biography of the
acclaimed Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen (1891–1964)...[An]
exhaustive and masterfully rendered narrative...[A] brilliant
biography.
*, Washington Post Book World*
Hutchinson draws on previously unused resource material to offer a
startlingly intimate portrait of a woman often presented as an
obscure figure in accounts of the literary scene of the time yet
who was, in actuality, smack-dab in the middle of debates about
racial uplift and about black writers selling out amid the vogue
among white bohemians to associate with black artists. Hutchinson
disputes earlier portraits of Larsen as pathological and instead
offers a nuanced look at a complicated woman wrestling with racial
identity and a fear of abandonment through her novels, Quicksand
(1928) and Passing (1929). Primarily through her relationships, and
correspondence, with luminary figures of the Harlem Renaissance,
Hutchinson brings Larsen to life in all her glorious complexity in
this sparkling examination of a critical period in American racial
and literary development. (starred review)
*Booklist*
Nine years in the making, George Hutchinson's exhaustively
researched new biography offers a revelatory new reading of
Larsen's life and work...In Search of Nella Larsen is a definitive
biography.
*Weekendavisen*
George Hutchinson...has produced what must be the definitive
biography of Larsen. It's hard to think of a stone he hasn't looked
under in his quest to establish the facts, correct mistakes and
trace her private life. But Hutchinson's biography also manages to
be an insightful reconsideration of a much-studied period in
American literature and black cultural history...Hutchinson's
respect for his subject is so great that one feels Nella Larsen can
at last be at rest.
*The Nation*
Remarkable...In Search of Nella Larsen is three books in one: in
the words of the subtitle, it is "a biography of the color line," a
study of official racism; it also incorporates a lively history of
the Harlem Renaissance; and, most engagingly, it is a record of the
hunt for a significant literary figure who slipped into oblivion at
the moment she should have been making the most of her modest but
genuine success (two well-received novels, garlanded by awards,
including a Guggenheim Fellowship)...Hutchinson's tenacious
adherence to documentary evidence, wherever he can find it, makes
even his account of Larsen's later nursing career absorbing.
*London Review of Books*
George Hutchinson demonstrates a keen capacity for meticulous
research in his exhaustive unraveling of the life of Nella Larsen,
a biracial novelist and shining light of the Harlem
Renaissance...[In Search of Nella Larsen] is essential for history
buffs and students of the Harlem Renaissance.
*Black Issues Book Review*
Hutchinson takes the reader on an intriguing journey through
Larsen's mysterious, often-befuddling life. He debunks the myths
and lies about her, which were held as finite truths for most of
the 20th century, by investigating primary sources that, for
whatever reason, have been ignored by other Larsen biographers.
Exploring more than the superficial aspects of her life as a
biracial woman, the author presents as complete a picture as
possible and does it without slighting her, as others have, for
choosing to pursue a life outside the literature in her later
years. This fluid, engrossing book not only treats the reader to a
wonderful biography of one woman's life but also serves up a feast
of literary and US history, setting Larsen against a visceral
backdrop of a moment in time when anything and everything seemed
possible for a race seeking its rightful place in the arts and
politics. In short, Hutchinson paints a captivating image of a
woman for too long overshadowed by literary figures considered more
worthy of praise.
*Choice*
Hutchinson's work brilliantly reinterprets Larsen's life in the
context of early twentieth-century race, class, and gender
restrictions and is now the definitive biography of this key figure
of the Harlem Renaissance.
*American Historical Review*
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