Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T13:01:47.275Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Filling in Blanks: Nella Larsen's Application to Library School

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Barbara Hochman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 1922 Nella Larsen Imes was the first African American applicant accepted to the library school of the New York Public Library; soon she would be a promising novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. Larsen's library school application is a rich text that discloses the encounter of a conflicted subject with the norms and values of an institution. Bureaucratic forms do not have readers—at least as literature professors generally use that word—but filling out an application requires cultural competence, and evaluating one requires interpretive activity. Responding to a standard question on the application, Larsen compiled a book list that reflects her pragmatic, aesthetic, and emotional investment in reading. Stylistically and thematically, this ephemeral document anticipates Larsen's best work; it intimates conflicting perspectives on race, gender, and national belonging while exposing the limits of “imagined community” in one culturally typical American institution.

Type
Special Topic: Cultures of Reading
Information
PMLA , Volume 133 , Issue 5: Special Topic Cultures of Reading , October 2018 , pp. 1172 - 1190
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 2006.Google Scholar
Anderson, Sarah A. “‘The Place to Go’: The 135th Street Branch Library and the Harlem Renaissance”. Library Quarterly, vol. 73, no. 4, 2003, pp. 383–421.Google Scholar
Andrews, Regina. “Goodwill Can Be Built upon Honest Books”. New York Amsterdam News, 14 Dec. 1946, p. 15. Proquest Historical Newspapers, www.proquest.com/products-services/pq-hist-news.html.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Paul. “In Defense of Reading; or, Why Reading Still Matters in a Contextualist Age”. New Literary History, vol. 42, no. 1, Winter 2011, pp. 87–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Augst, homas. “Faith in Reading: Public Libraries, Liberalism, and the Civil Religion”. Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States, edited by Augst, and Carpenter, Kenneth, U of Massachusetts P, 2007, pp. 148–83.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Robin. Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. NYU P, 2011.Google Scholar
Boyd, Ernest. “A Shelf of Recent Books: See American Fiction First”. The Bookman, vol. 54, no. 2, 1921, pp. 160–61.Google Scholar
Boyd, Marion. “To the Editor.” Our Rostrum. Forum, vol. 83, no. 4, Apr. 1930, p. xli.Google Scholar
Brenneis, Don. “Reforming Promise”. Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge, edited by Riles, Annelise, U of Michigan P, 2007, pp. 41–70.Google Scholar
Brickhouse, Anna. “Nella Larsen and the Intertextual Geography of Quicksand!” African American Review, vol. 35, no. 4, 2001, pp. 533–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cather, Willa. My Ántonia. Houghton Mifflin, 1988.Google Scholar
Circular of Information. New York Public Library, 1915–16.Google Scholar
Circular of Information. New York Public Library, 1921–22.Google Scholar
Davis, Donald Gordon. The Association of American Library Schools, 1915-1968: An Analytical History. Scarecrow Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Davis, Thadious. Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. Louisiana State UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Douglas, Ann. Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil. 1920. Electronic Text Center, etext.lib.Virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubDark.html.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. “Fall Books”. The Crisis, vol. 29. no. 1, Nov. 1924, pp. 25–26. Black Thought and Culture, alexanderstreet.com/BLTC.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. “Opinion”. The Crisis, vol. 24, no. 6, Oct. 1922, pp. 247–52.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B., and Alain Locke. “The Younger Literary Movement.” The Crisis, vol. 27, no. 4, Feb. 1924, pp. 161–63. Black Thought and Culture, solomon.tinyurl.alexanderstreet.com/2HLN.Google Scholar
“Editor's Note.” Our Rostrum. Forum, vol. 83, no. 4, Apr. 1930, p. xli.Google Scholar
English, Daylanne K. Unnatural Selections: Eugenics in American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. U of North Carolina P, 2005.Google Scholar
Fleissner, Jennifer. Women, Compulsion, Modernity: The Moment of American Naturalism. U of Chicago P, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garland, Hamlin. A Daughter of the Middle Border. 1921. Macmillan, 1926.Google Scholar
Gearhart, Edna Bonham. Application for admission to the Library School of the New York Public Library. 1912. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 24.Google Scholar
Gikandi, Simon. “The Fantasy of the Library”. PMLA, vol. 128, no. 1, Jan. 2013, pp. 9–20.Google Scholar
Gitelman, Lisa. Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents. Duke UP, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
G.J. “Growth of the Soil”. America Magazine, 23 Apr. 1921, p. 19.Google Scholar
Goodell, Frederick. Letter to Ernest J. Reece. 5 July 1922. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 29.Google Scholar
Grant, Madison. The Passing of the Great Race; or, The Racial Basis of European History. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916.Google Scholar
Grimké, Angelina Weld. “The Closing Door”. Selected Works of Angelina Weld Grimké, edited by Herron, Carolivia, Oxford UP, 1991, pp. 252–81.Google Scholar
Grimké, Angelina Weld. Rachel: A Play in Three Acts. Selected Works of Angelina Weld Grimké, edited by Herron, Carolivia, Oxford UP, 1991, pp. 123–212.Google Scholar
Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. U of Chicago P, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guillory, John. “The Memo and Modernity”. Critical Inquiry, vol. 31, no. 1, Autumn 2004, pp. 108–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamsun, Knut. Growth of the Soil. translated by Worster, W.W., Grosset and Dunlap, 1921.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haviland, Beverly. “Passing from Paranoia to Plagiarism: The Abject Authorship of Nella Larsen”. Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 43, no. 2, 1997, pp. 295–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochman, Barbara. “Investing in Literature: Ernestine Rose and the Harlem Branch Public Library of the 1920s”. Legacy, vol. 31, no. 1, 2014, pp. 93–106.Google Scholar
Hochman, Barbara. “Love and heft: Plagiarism, Blackface, and Nella Larsen's ‘Sanctuary.‘” American Literature, vol. 88, no. 3, Sept. 2016, pp. 509–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoeller, Hildegard. “Race, Modernism, and Plagiarism: The Case of Nella Larsen's ‘Sanctuary.‘” African American Review, vol. 40, no. 3, 2006, pp. 421–37.Google Scholar
Hofflund, Olang. Application for admission to the Library School of the New York Public Library. 1922. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 30.Google Scholar
Holloway, Karla F.C. Bookmarks: Reading in Black and White. Rutgers UP, 2006.Google Scholar
Hubbell, Ruth A. Application for admission to the Library School of the New York Public Library. 1925. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 30.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, George. In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line. Harvard UP, 2006. Imes, Nella Larsen (see also Larsen, Nella). Application for admission to the Library School of the New York Public Library. 27 Apr. 1922. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 30.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, George. “Guggenheim Application.” Larsen, Passing, pp. 152–56.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, George. “Student Record.” Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 30.Google Scholar
Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Johns Hopkins UP, 1974.Google Scholar
Jackson, Leon. “The Talking Book and the Talking Book Historian: African American Cultures of Print: The State of the Discipline”. Book History, vol. 13, 2010, pp. 251–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kafka, Ben. The Demon of Writing. Zone Books, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kafka, Ben. “Paperwork: The State of the Discipline”. Book History, vol. 12, 2009, pp. 340–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knickerbocker, John Howard. Application for admission to the Library School of the New York Public Library. 1922. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 30.Google Scholar
“Knut Hamsun's Greatest Novel Glorifies Life of the Soil”. Current Opinion, vol. 70, no. 5, 1921, p. 670. American Periodicals Series, www.proquest.com/products-services/aps.html.Google Scholar
Larsen, Nella (see also Imes, Nella Larsen). “Author's Explanation.” Our Rostrum. Forum, vol. 83, no. 4, Apr. 1930, pp. xli-xlii.Google Scholar
Larsen, Nella. Passing. Edited by Kaplan, Carla, W.W. Norton, 2007.Google Scholar
Larsen, Nella. Quicksand. Quicksand and Passing, edited byGoogle Scholar
Deborah, E. McDowell, Rutgers UP, 2007, pp. 1–135.Google Scholar
Larson, Charles R. Introduction. An Intimation of Things Distant: The Collected Fiction of Nella Larsen, Doubleday, 1992, pp. xi-xxi.Google Scholar
Larson, Kelli A. “Surviving the Taint of Plagiarism: Nella Larsen's ‘Sanctuary’ and Sheila Kaye-Smith's ‘Mrs. Adis.‘” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 30, no. 4, 2007, pp. 82–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locke, George H. Letter to Edith W. Tiemann, registrar. 28 June 1920. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 30.Google Scholar
Lockhart, Marjorie L. Application for admission to the Library School of the New York Public Library. 1923. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 30.Google Scholar
Loon, Hendrik van. The Story of Mankind. Boni and Liv-eright, 1921.Google Scholar
Lynch, Deidre Shauna. Loving Literature: A Cultural History. U of Chicago P, 2015.Google Scholar
Macharia, Keguro. “Queering Helga Crane: Black Na-tivism in Nella Larsen's Quicksand”. Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 57, no. 2, Summer 2011, pp. 254–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mencken, H.L. Prejudices. 1919. Vintage Books, 1958.Google Scholar
Moritzen, Julius. “Is the Translator without a Literary Conscience?” he Bookman, Apr. 1921, pp. 133–35. American Periodicals Series, www.proquest.com/products-services/aps.html.Google Scholar
Moynahan, Sinead. “Beautiful White Girlhood? Daisy Buchanan in Nella Larsen's Passing”. African American Review, vol. 47, no. 1, Spring 2014, pp. 37–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mulligan, Roark. Review of A Summer to Be, a Memoir by the Daughter of Hamlin Garland, by Isabel Garland Lord. Studies in American Naturalism, vol. 3, no. 2, 2008, p. 192.Google Scholar
Newlin, Keith. Hamlin Garland, a Life. U of Nebraska P, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nishikawa, Kinohi, “Merely Reading”. PMLA, vol. 130, no. 3, May 2015, pp. 697–703.Google Scholar
Orlando, Emily J. “Irreverent Intimacy: Nella Larsen's Revisions of Edith Wharton”. Twentieth-Century Literature, vol. 61, no. 1, Mar. 2015, pp. 32–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Recommendation form for Grace Hamilton. 1923. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 24.Google Scholar
Recommendation form for Mary Patton Welles. 1919. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 30.Google Scholar
Recommendation form for Violet Gordon Gray. 1921. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 24.Google Scholar
Reece, Ernest J. Letter to Frederick Goodell. 7 July 1922. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 29.Google Scholar
Ridington, John. Letter to Alice G. Higgins, instructor. 14 July 1924. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 29.Google Scholar
Robertson, Craig. The Passport in America: The History of a Document. Oxford UP, 2010.Google Scholar
Rose, Ernestine. “Books and the Color Line”. he Survey, vol. 48, 15 Apr. 1922, pp. 75–76.Google Scholar
Rose, Ernestine. “A Librarian in Harlem”. Opportunity, vol. 1, 1923, pp. 206+.Google Scholar
Rose, Ernestine. Recommendation form for Mrs. Nella Larsen Imes. 30 Apr. 1922. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 30.Google Scholar
Rose, Ernestine. “Serving New York's Black City”. Library Journal, 15 Mar. 1921, pp. 255–58.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Duke UP, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selden, Steven. Inheriting Shame: The Story of Eugenics and Racism in America. Teachers College P, 1999.Google Scholar
“A Selected List of Books Dealing with the Negro Problem.” he Crisis, Oct. 1922, p. 287.Google Scholar
Senchyne, Jonathan. “Material Textuality and Communal Affiliation in Early America”. Book History, vol. 19, 2016, pp. 66–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoddard, Lothrop. The New World of Islam. Chapman and Hall, 1921.Google Scholar
Stoddard, Lothrop. The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy. 1920. Chapman and Hall, 1925.Google Scholar
Strachey, Lytton. Queen Victoria. Harcourt, Brace, 1921.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Larry E. “Reece, Ernest James”. Supplement to the Dictionary of American Library Biography, edited by Wayne A. Wiegand, vol. 1, Libraries Unlimited, 1990, pp. 101–04.Google Scholar
Tankard, Paul. “Reading Lists”. Prose Studies, vol. 28, no. 3, 2006, pp. 337–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tate, Claudia. “Desire and Death in Quicksand!” American Literary History, vol. 7, no. 2, Summer 1995, pp. 234–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Townsend, R.D. “Growth of the Soil”. Outlook, 20 Apr. 1921, p. 643. American Periodicals Series, www.proquest.com/products-services/aps.html.Google Scholar
Weale, B.L.Putnam. The Fight for the Republic in China. Dodd, Mead, 1917.Google Scholar
Whitmire, Ethelene. Regina Anderson Andrews, Harlem Renaissance Librarian. U of Illinois P, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, E.C. Recommendation for Mrs. Nella Larsen Imes. 30 Apr. 1922. Library School of the New York Public Library, housed at Columbia U, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 30.Google Scholar
Williams, Erika Renee. “A Lie of Omission: Plagiarism in Nella Larsen's Quicksand!” African American Review, vol. 45, nos. 1-2, Spring-Summer 2012, pp. 205–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, Charles C. Training for Library Service. Merrymount Press, 1923.Google Scholar
Worster, W.W. “Knut Hamsun.” Afterword. Hamsun, pp. 257–76.Google Scholar