AfroNordic Feminism in the 1920s

Abstract

This essay questions and counters the alleged ethnic homogeneity of Nordic history, combined with the inability or unwillingness to witness the long histories of AfroNordic communities, by considering the specificities of AfroNordic feminism as it was expressed in the 1920s through Nella Larsen and her writings. Larsen was a famous author of the African American literary movement of the Harlem Renaissance in the early 1900s. Though she was open about her biracial and Nordic background, her texts have been largely unknown to Nordic audiences and scholars until the 2010s and 2020s. I explore what has made readers unable to see Larsen as part of Nordic and AfroNordic feminist literary history and how she forged her own articulation of AfroNordic feminism. What specificities did Larsen’s Nordic background provide for her feminist critiques, and how does our understanding of the history of Nordic writing change when we consider early Black voices in that canon? I discuss Larsen in engagement with contemporary AfroNordic feminist ideas to draw out some of the historical continuities and changes in AfroNordic feminist thought.