It is the likes of Marcus Garvey and his goonies that would wildly support a call for our people to abandon their nation! As Naxos we are proud to say we recruit the likes from blacks in the Caribbean, Africa, and beyond. Only the truly lost, would buy into the belief that nation with the… View More

My dear Nella. May I call you that? It seems we may as well remain on more personal terms if you continue to spit on my legacy in such intimate fashion. You and Helga Crane are the dance of death to wish our people will fall. The world continues to turn as our voices are… View More

Dear Clare, My sincerest apologies. Your letter moves me, but if I had to write your story all over again, I couldn’t change a thing. That life you longed for? It doesn’t exist. Not for biracial women like you and me. Trust me, I’ve looked for it. I’ve tried to work out every possibility, in… View More

What the Critics have to say (a not exhaustive list of the scholarship available addressing both of Larsen’s novels) and in response to Playing Passing: Anthony, Dawahare. “The Gold Standard of Racial Identity in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Passing.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg, vol. 200, Gale, 2008. Literature Criticism Online, http://link.galegroup.com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/apps/doc/HFMZSW841706538/LCO?u=new64731&sid=LCO&xid=675652f6…. View More

You’re so right, Nella!  When I was in Harlem, I thought Copenhagen could save me, but they’ve dressed me up and paraded me around like a shiny, exotic object!  I don’t belong here. I should return to my other people. My Harlem kin; my own kind.  I miss Harlem’s “dirty streets…with dark, gay humanity.” I… View More

If you are not long for this world, Mr. Washington, then get on with it and go. And may your hell be segregation in heaven, the segregation you have aimed for with your educational program. They call you the Negro Moses, and indeed you have parted the Red (Clay) Sea of the South, with whites… View More

A place where “the color line doesn’t exist?” Are you kidding me?!? Brazilians may be bragging that they’re accepting of mixed marriages, but that is only because they are trying to end Negritude: dark back, eight-rock, gator-face, inky dink, jar head, jig, monkey chaser, and high yaller. Brazil may not front as directly racist, but… View More

Mr. Green has come home, and with him a pretty new wife: a Ms. Helga Crane.  Helga.  Doesn’t really sound much like a name.  Sounds like something you’d hear from an old fairy tail or book.  Sounds like something belonging to some stout white grandmother, not a dainty little thing like her.  Then again, looking… View More

It’s a good thing I get the last word on this one, my Helga. I’m glad for the chance to sit my young self down and explain what I know now that I only felt in my gut then. Run! To you now, Denmark seems accepting, enlightened. Above or beyond the color line across which… View More

The reverend is headed north, and the whole town is in a fuss.  Not ’cause he’s leaving us, of course; it’s just a little visit to one of our sister congregations up there.  No, it’s because he’s going north. White folk wouldn’t understand what that means to people like us.  They never had to hear… View More