Kathleen's Reviews > Quicksand

“Why couldn’t she have two lives, or why couldn’t she be satisfied in one place?”

I know, as all of us probably do, what it is to feel there are different parts of your self, and finding a way to meld them so you can be happy is incredibly difficult. How much more so, when these parts of yourself come across to the world by the color of your skin, not accurately reflecting you necessarily, but creating misrepresentations and even more hurdles?

We’re introduced to Helga Crane, a mixed-race young woman in 1920’s Alabama, when she’s having such a crisis, contemplating leaving the school where she teaches and where she feels an outsider. Right away, I was taken with her strong reactions, her seemingly short fuse, her realistic and understandable response to her early and enduring struggles. As the story unfolds, she explores Black life in Harlem and goes abroad to be pampered as a novelty in Copenhagen. She arrives in each place with high hopes and her sense of unease subsides for a while, but always returns.

I found this a surprisingly honest story--about race, yes, but also more broadly about women’s anger, frustration and regrets. We think we’ll eventually reconcile it all, but sometimes we don’t.