Larsen, who published the novel with the AL-
FREDA. KNOPF, dedicated the work to her hus-
band. She also included a telling epigraph from
“Cross,” a moving LANGSTON HUGHES poem
about a mixed-race child whose “old man died in a
fine big house” and “ma died in a shack. / I wonder
where I’m going to die / Being neither white nor
black.” Larsen’s strategic use of the epigraph sig-
naled the novel’s focus on mixed-race identity,
class and race divisions, racial assimilation, and
deadly social alienation.
According to Larsen biographer Thadious
Davis, Quicksandwas well-received, and Larsen
was pleased by the response to her debut novel.
Davis notes that white reviews praised the book
for its orderly presentation, style, and aesthetics.
African-American reviews, however, tended to
focus on Larsen’s investigations of racial matters
and praised the new approach and contexts that
Larsen used to explore race and identity in the
contemporary world. Davis notes that ARTHUR
HUFF FAUSET celebrated Larsen’s intervention
and regarded the work as “a step forward” (Davis,
279). GWENDOLYNBENNETT, whose first com-
ments on the work appeared in “THE EBONY
FLUTE,” her regular OPPORTUNITYcolumn, cele-
brated the fact that “this book does not set as its
tempo that of the Harlem cabaret... and that
Harlem night-life is more or less submerged by this
author in the psychological struggle of the hero-
ine” (Davis, 278–279). The eminent CRISISeditor
W. E. B. DUBOIScelebrated the work as a sharp
relief from the chaos of works like CLAUDE
MCKAY’s HOME TOHARLEM.DuBois character-
ized Larsen’s work as “fine, thoughtful and coura-
geous” and confidently asserted that it was “on
the whole, the best piece of fiction that Negro
America has produced since the heyday of Ches-
nutt” (Davis, 280). ALAINLOCKEagreed, praising
the novel as a “social document of importance,
and as well, a living, moving picture of a type not
often in the foreground of Negro fiction, and here
treated for the first time with adequacy” (Davis,
281). The high praise buoyed Larsen immensely
and fueled her as she worked to complete her sec-
ond novel, PASSING(1929). Quicksandstill stands
as one of the most sophisticated and compelling
works of the Harlem Renaissance.Bibliography
Davis, Thadious M. Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem
Renaissance: A Woman’s Life Unveiled.Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1994.
Larson, Charles. Invisible Darkness: Jean Toomer and Nella
Larsen.Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993.
McLendon, Jacquelyn. The Politics of Color in the Fiction
of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen.Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1995.
Wall, Cheryl. Women of the Harlem Renaissance.Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press, 1995.Quicksand 437