Scan barcode
ida_s's review against another edition
5.0
This was an incredibly well-written and detailed biography. It especially paints a vivid picture of life in Harlem among the literary elite in the late 1920s. I find Nella Larsen's life and writing absolutely fascinating, and what a great shame it is that none of her later correspondence and writings survived - if there were any.
dominiquejl's review against another edition
4.0
This book took FOREVER to get through- it’s not entirely the author’s fault, the paucity of sources for some eras and people, and the density of sources for others, unfortunately make it very difficult to write a consistently paced book.
Nella was of course a complex, often difficult person, and Hutchinson does a good job of conveying that, although I found his rather heavy-handed judgment of her and those around her, consistent throughout the book, often distracting and unhelpful.
This book is definitely a catalyst for wanting to read more on the Harlem Renaissance generally, and specific people in her social circle specifically. Carl Van Vechten for sure, but also James Weldon Johnson and Edna Thomas and Jessie Fauset and all the other girls from the 135th Street NYPL branch.
My favorite thing about this book is the attention paid paid to the Black librarians and teachers and nurses who shaped the history of the arts scene in Harlem. Hutchinson mentions that his wife is a nurse in his acknowledgements, and the care he puts into blurring the line between artistic work and other professional pursuits for women is for me the best revelation of the book (and a lesson I wish more people would learn!)
If you’re here for Harlem Renaissance gossip, there’s plenty of it, and it’s juicy, but sometimes you do have to wade through overlong passages of photo and literary criticism to get to it. It’s still worth it overall. I read the book bit by bit over the course of a few months, so while I can’t claim you won’t be able to put it down, there was always enough to keep me picking it back up.
Nella was of course a complex, often difficult person, and Hutchinson does a good job of conveying that, although I found his rather heavy-handed judgment of her and those around her, consistent throughout the book, often distracting and unhelpful.
This book is definitely a catalyst for wanting to read more on the Harlem Renaissance generally, and specific people in her social circle specifically. Carl Van Vechten for sure, but also James Weldon Johnson and Edna Thomas and Jessie Fauset and all the other girls from the 135th Street NYPL branch.
My favorite thing about this book is the attention paid paid to the Black librarians and teachers and nurses who shaped the history of the arts scene in Harlem. Hutchinson mentions that his wife is a nurse in his acknowledgements, and the care he puts into blurring the line between artistic work and other professional pursuits for women is for me the best revelation of the book (and a lesson I wish more people would learn!)
If you’re here for Harlem Renaissance gossip, there’s plenty of it, and it’s juicy, but sometimes you do have to wade through overlong passages of photo and literary criticism to get to it. It’s still worth it overall. I read the book bit by bit over the course of a few months, so while I can’t claim you won’t be able to put it down, there was always enough to keep me picking it back up.
mimosaeyes's review against another edition
5.0
I feel as though I knew Larsen. I actually started crying when I got to the coda at the end of the last chapter, as if I'd experienced the loss of her myself. Hutchinson writes objectively, but with a warmth and sympathy and intelligence that I think Larsen would have appreciated.
A great work of scholarship, and like the best biographies, evokes what was most human and irreducible about its subject.
A great work of scholarship, and like the best biographies, evokes what was most human and irreducible about its subject.
zoracious's review against another edition
5.0
Involving an exhaustive amount of research, Hutchinson puts previous biographical works about Larsen to shame, and shows them in no uncertain terms that some of their assumptions about this so-called mystery woman of the Harlem Renaissance are simply wrong. Larsen's is a story that is as fascinating (if not more so) than any of her books or stories, and Hutchinson tells her own story with great passion.
The third recent biographer to devote a major biographical study on Larsen (after Charles Larson and Thadious M. Davis), Hutchinson attempts to discover the reason behind Larsen’s absence from the pen and the public eye. While Davis and Larson suggest that this disappearance was due to Larsen’s inability to accept the blackness of her skin and internalization of the prevalent racism of her time, Hutchinson, in what he calls a “biographical reclamation” found in his eight years of research new data (including records at the New York Public Library, blueprints, census data, and documents owned by Harlem Renaissance recorder & Larsen’s mentor Carl Van Vechten) to paint a slightly different picture. While detailing the various people with whom she connected and providing insight into the plagiarism scandal, Hutchinson also, more notably, suggests that she did not pass during the final decades of her life but instead effected a productive and successful career change (and, was in fact not as light-skinned as was previously thought). While the use of Van Vechten’s documents is controversial because of his reputation as a Harlem voyeur, this is a good accompaniment to the previous research done by Larson and Davis, with some added information that paints a fuller picture of the writer popularly known as the mystery figure of the Harlem Renaissance. With illuminating conviction, Hutchinson argues that, though Larsen “never stopped thinking of herself as a Negro” (186), she deliberately chose not to live on either side of the color line and rejected the limitations of racial categories.
The third recent biographer to devote a major biographical study on Larsen (after Charles Larson and Thadious M. Davis), Hutchinson attempts to discover the reason behind Larsen’s absence from the pen and the public eye. While Davis and Larson suggest that this disappearance was due to Larsen’s inability to accept the blackness of her skin and internalization of the prevalent racism of her time, Hutchinson, in what he calls a “biographical reclamation” found in his eight years of research new data (including records at the New York Public Library, blueprints, census data, and documents owned by Harlem Renaissance recorder & Larsen’s mentor Carl Van Vechten) to paint a slightly different picture. While detailing the various people with whom she connected and providing insight into the plagiarism scandal, Hutchinson also, more notably, suggests that she did not pass during the final decades of her life but instead effected a productive and successful career change (and, was in fact not as light-skinned as was previously thought). While the use of Van Vechten’s documents is controversial because of his reputation as a Harlem voyeur, this is a good accompaniment to the previous research done by Larson and Davis, with some added information that paints a fuller picture of the writer popularly known as the mystery figure of the Harlem Renaissance. With illuminating conviction, Hutchinson argues that, though Larsen “never stopped thinking of herself as a Negro” (186), she deliberately chose not to live on either side of the color line and rejected the limitations of racial categories.
More...