Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman's Life Unveiled

Abstract

Nella Larsen, Novelist of Harlem Renaissance: A Woman's Life Unveiled. Thadious M. Davis. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994. xxiii + 465 pages, illustrated. $34.95. Thadious Davis's exhaustive search into census records, school records, and birth, death, and marriage certificates in Chicago results in startling revelation early in her comprehensive biography of one of most important, if enigmatic writers to emerge from Harlem Renaissance. For years, it was believed that Nella Larsen's father was colored Danish Virgin Islander who died early in her childhood. Davis challenges this story and argues compellingly that Larsen fabricated tale of his early demise. It appears that narrative was actually metaphor young Larsen created for her father's rejection of his dark-skinned daughter--the daughter who threatened his chances of successfully passing for white. This rejection resulted in Larsen's placement in home for gifts in Chicago, and later in her sojourn to Fisk Normal School in Nashville where she became familiar with world of black middle class--a world with which she would for rest of her life retain an essential yet ambivalent connection. This important discovery exists as only first of many critical findings in Davis's biography of Larsen. Davis has sifted through mountains of letters, recorded innumerable phone conversations and interviews, and researched an array of official records to develop her portrait of this novelist. She uncovers much new information about Larsen's education, her supportive and nurturing, but ultimately failed marriage, her close friendship with Carl Van Vechten, her elitism, and reclusive manner in which she lived out her last twenty years. Throughout four hundred and sixty five pages of this biography, Davis underscores Larsen's prodigious efforts to construct multiple versions of her public identity. The metamorphosis of Larsen's name from Nellie Walker to Nellie Larson to Nella Larsen to Nella Larsen Imes represents repeated transformations of self she underwent. This string of identities--and complex emotions that may have accompanied them--serve as Davis's thematic foundation for biography. Davis points out that greatest tension in [Larsen's] life was between truth and meaning, or transformation of truth into its signifiers and significations. In her attempts to separate out truth of Larsen's life from its conflicting signifiers, Davis presents an immense amount of information about Larsen's environment. For example, in her efforts to trace Larsen's early years, Davis provides us with extensive information on Fisk Normal School and University. Readers learn of ratio of African Americans to whites in Nashville; school's mission and purpose; its physical facilities; uniforms students were required to wear; and rules governing student behavior. What remains unavailable, however, is much specific information on Larsen herself; there are no letters from this period and few people are still alive who can shed light on her stay at Fisk as student. Davis's perhaps overly extensive re-creation of environment in which Larsen lived cannot take place of information about woman herself. It is at these moments when truth and meaning seem to conflict, for as Davis observes, it is a multiplicity of stances and plurality of perspectives assumed by Larsen that gave her the ability to envelope herself in distinct, and mutually exclusive personae that complicated her responses to her surroundings and other people. Detailed descriptions of environment aid us only in our speculation. Used very effectively by Davis are letters Larsen wrote between 1920, when she published her first stories in children's magazine, and 1933, year of her divorce from Elmer Imes. This section of book occupies nearly three hundred pages of text and includes references to and citations from nearly every prominent actor in Harlem Renaissance. …