Political Quotes

“This is Women's History Month. I rise to recognize Nella Larsen, who was born in Chicago in 1891. Her mother was a Danish immigrant and her father an immigrant from the Danish West Indies, what is now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands. Larsen attended school in all-White environments in Chicago until she moved to Nashville to attend high school. She later practiced nursing, served as a librarian in the New York Public Library, and, after resigning from that position, she began a literary career. Her first novel, ``Quicksand,'' won her a Harmon Foundation bronze medal. After the publication of her second novel, ``Passing,'' in 1929, Larsen was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a first for an African American woman, establishing her as a premier novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. She died in New York in 1964. Her work explored the complex issues of racial identity and identification in her fiction. Though critics remain conflicted about her novels, ``Quicksand'' and ``Passing,'' there can be no question that they are significant, groundbreaking American literary texts. She received a number of awards for her writing. Along with her contemporary, novelist Zora Neale Hurston, Larsen is considered to be one of the most important female voices in the Harlem Renaissance. We remember her voice now. ____________________”