24 January 2020

Book Beginning: Passing by Nella Larsen


Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.
It was the last letter in Irene Redfield's little pile of morning mail. After her other ordinary and clearly directed letters the long envelope of thin Italian paper with its almost illegible scrawl seemed out of place and alien.



This 1929 novel is set in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, in the 1920s and follows themes then current in the Harlem Renaissance. It's a short novella paired with another Larsen novel, "Passing", in my book. I'm looking forward to learning about what the back cover calls "the social world of the black bourgeoisie".


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