Academics
Coming to Netflix! Nella Larsen's Passing is a distinctive and revealing novel about racial identity, now a critically acclaimed film adaptation by Rebecca Hall, starring Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga and Alexander Skarsg¥rd. Irene Redfield, married to a successful physician, enjoys a comfortable life in Harlem, New York. Reluctantly, she renews her friendship with old school friend, Clare Kendry. Clare, who like Irene is light skinned,passes' as white and is married to a racist white man who has no idea about Clare's racial heritage. Clare is very persuasive and Irene, despite misgivings, can't resist letting her back into her world. As tensions mount between friends and between couples, this taut and mesmerizing narrative spins towards an unexpected end. This edition of Passing features an introduction by writer and academic, Christa Holm Vogelius.
Nella Larsen was born in Chicago in 1891 to a white Danish mother and a black West Indian father. She studied in America and Denmark and throughout her writing career she worked as a children's librarian and primarily as a nurse. In 1928 her first novel Quicksand was published to great critical acclaim. Passing was published a year later. Her marriage brought her into contact with the upper echelons of New York's black society and she became an important female voice of the Harlem Renaissance. She was the first black woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing. Divorced in 1933, she spent the rest of her life working as nurse. Nella Larsen died in 1964.
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