I enjoyed the author and book so much that I wrote my final essay about them. I was initially exposed to Larsen and Quicksand during my Modern Literature course. In Harlem, after she enjoys dancing freely with other blacks she immediately shuts down her enjoyment by likening herself and those dancing to jungle creatures. In Copenhagen, she realizes that the white audience viewed her the same as the black performers on stage, a spectacle to be entertained and pleased by. This project focuses on the vaudeville performance and cabaret/jazz scene. She would experience these moments during artistic happenings in the book such as dancing to jazz at a Harlem cabaret, gospel spirituals sung in a church service and experiencing black performers on stage during a vaudeville performance with a predominantly white audience in Copenhagen. She continually explores various predetermined categories for black women and becomes irritable once she runs into their walls. Quicksand follows the life of character, Helga Crane, a woman of mixed, black/white, race during the 1920s who travels from place to place in search of lasting satisfaction that she never finds. Quicksand by Nella Larsen at Bent, But Unbroken Exhibition, 2017 Text and inspiration from the book, Quicksand by Nella Larsen.
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