With her 1928 novel Quicksand, Nella Larsen became an important literary voice of the Harlem Renaissance. The novel follows Helga Crane, daughter of a Danish immigrant mother and black West Indian father, in her struggle to identify as a mixed race female. Larsen’s autobiographical main character illustrates both the general outline of the “race problem” in the early twentieth century and the specific social ideologies that frustrate and entrap a modern “tragic mulatto” in her quest for acceptance and selfhood.
The novel begins at Naxos, a Southern institute for black education where twenty-two-year-old Helga is in her second year as a teacher of “happy, singing children, whose charm and distinctiveness the school was so surely ready to destroy” (7). Helga’s discontent in the stultifying Naxos community is immediately apparent. Though glimpses of previous happiness shine...
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Citation: Chura, Patrick, Casey Shevlin. "Quicksand". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 August 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2494, accessed 09 June 2026.]
