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Book Salon
Passing

  • This month we're reading Passing by Nella Larsen. Our faculty host is Allyson Hobbs.

    "Writing a history of passing is writing a history of loss. It seems to pass as 'white' is to gain. To be white, particularly during racial segregation, meant to have a better job. It meant to live in a better neighborhood, it meant the right to vote. It meant to enjoy countless social privileges. What struck me was not so much what was gained by passing, but rather what was lost by leaving an African American identity behind."

    Allyson Hobbs, assistant professor of American history

How to Participate

Watch Book Salon host, Allyson Hobbs discuss passing at TEDxStanford 
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About this quarter's book selection

Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield were two childhood friends who lost touch. After Clare’s father died, she moved in with her two white aunts. Hiding her true identity as part-black, her fair skin allowed her to ‘pass’ as white and eventually marry a wealthy, white businessman, whose violent racism forces Clare to deny her ethnic ‘identity.’ Irene Redfield, the novel’s protagonist, also has mixed ancestry but commits herself to racial uplift and marries a black, prominent physician with whom she shares a comfortable Harlem town house with their sons.

The novel centers on the reacquaintance of the two at a rooftop restaurant in Chicago. As 'black' women who can 'pass' for 'white,' they meet at this decidedly white restaurant, after gauging each other in confused silence. As Clare starts to reassert herself into Irene's life, Irene begins to experience anxiety, frightened of the consequences of Clare's dangerous behavior. And when Clare observes the vibrancy and energy of the community she left behind, her burning desire to come back jeopardizes her carefully tailored deception.

Garnering critical acclaim in 1929, Passing establishes Nella Larsen's importance among women writers of the Harlem Renaissance. This book has received renewed attention from scholarly criticism for its complex depiction of gender, racial and sexual ambiguities.

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