The Harlem Renaissance period in American modernist literature began when black authors wrote about what they were familiar with: what it means to be black. Writers such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Willa Cather demonstrated through their writings that the lives of African Americans were not only different from those of their white counterparts, but that the writings were relevant to the historical period and beyond. Another Harlem Renaissance writer who paved the way for future black writers was Nella Larsen, author of the short story Quicksand. Nella Larsen was born in 1891 in Chicago, the daughter of a white Danish woman and a black West Indian man (Britannica.com). After her father died when she was just two years old, Larsen became a source of embarrassment to her family because the man her mother then married was white (About.com). After attending high school in Nashville, Larsen lived in Copenhagen for a few years before becoming a nurse and marrying Elmer Imes (Britannica.com). The Imes family moved to Harlem, where Larsen worked in a public library before resigning to pursue a career as a writer (Baym 1721). An excellent writer, Larsen has received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, the first for an African-American woman (BookRags.com). Unfortunately, her world fell apart after she was accused of plagiarizing a story and her divorce from Elmer Imes (Baym 1721). She retired from the literary scene and resumed her nursing career (About.com). He died in 1964, aged 72 (Britannica.com). The Quicksand story has a myriad of interesting characters. Patricia Hill Collins used the term “matrix of domination” in the sense that it contains few pure victims or oppressors. Each individual draws several... halves of the paper...... from the best stories ever written by anyone, regardless of color. Works Cited Labbé, J. ““A Price Too High”: The “Terrible Honesty” of Black Women's Work in Quicksand” Meridians 10.1 (2009): 81-111. Research Library, ProQuest. Network. December 4, 2010. Larsen, N. (2007). Quicksand. In N. Baym (Eds.), The Norton anthology of American literature (7th ed.) New York: W. W. Norton & Company. "Nella Larsen." Encyclopedia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 04 December 2010. “Nella Larsen”. (2006). History of women. About.com. Network. 4 December 2010. < http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_larsen_nella.htm> “Nella Larsen Biography”. (n.d.) BookRags. Network. 4 December 2010. < http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_larsen_nella.htm>