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Nellie Larsen was an American novelist during the Harlem Renaissance. She is best known for her 1929 novel Passing.[1]
Nellie Walker was born on 13 Apr 1891 in a poor district known as the Levee in south Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was the daughter of Peter Walker, believed to be a mixed race Afro-Caribbean immigrant from the Danish West Indies, and Pederline Marie Hansen, a Danish immigrant (b: 1868 Brahetrolleborg parish, Island of Fyn (Funen); d: 1951 Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, California). [2]
Her father left or died when she was young. She spent several years of her early childhood in Denmark, and returned again to attend the University of Copenhagen for 3 years. [2]
Her mother who went by Mary Larsen (sometimes misspelled Larson) in the USA, worked as a seamstress and domestic worker in Chicago, Illinois, USA. When her mother remarried, Nellie took her stepfather's surname of Larsen or Larson. [2]
She became a nurse at Lincoln hospital in the Bronx. She married an African-American physicist and moved to Harlem where she became a librarian and wrote novels.
She passed away on 30 Mar 1964 at her apartment in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. [2] She was buried at Cypress Hills Cemetery. A headstone was placed in 2006 by Danish-American author Heidi Durrow. [3]
In 2018, the New York Times published a belated obituary. [4]
In 2020, the United States Postal Services honored her as Nella Larsen, one of the 4 people on the Voices of the Harlem Renaissance stamp issue. [5]
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