Book contents
- Race in American Literature and Culture
- Cambridge Themes in American Literature and Culture
- Race in American Literature and Culture
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Fractured Foundations
- Part II Racial Citizenship
- Part III Contending Forces
- Part IV Reconfigurations
- Chapter 10 Passing
- Chapter 11 Beyond Assimilation
- Chapter 12 Native Reconfigurations
- Chapter 13 Dispossessions and Repositionings
- Chapter 14 “White by Law,” White by Literature
- Part V Envisioning Race
- Part VI Case Studies
- Part VII Reflections and Prospects
- Index
Chapter 10 - Passing
from Part IV - Reconfigurations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2022
- Race in American Literature and Culture
- Cambridge Themes in American Literature and Culture
- Race in American Literature and Culture
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Fractured Foundations
- Part II Racial Citizenship
- Part III Contending Forces
- Part IV Reconfigurations
- Chapter 10 Passing
- Chapter 11 Beyond Assimilation
- Chapter 12 Native Reconfigurations
- Chapter 13 Dispossessions and Repositionings
- Chapter 14 “White by Law,” White by Literature
- Part V Envisioning Race
- Part VI Case Studies
- Part VII Reflections and Prospects
- Index
Summary
The essay focuses on the uses and significance of the trope of passing, as both theme and literary strategy, in African American fiction from the 19th to the 21st century. Passing as a theme pushed the boundaries of arbitrary, but operative, racial dichotomies, while passing as a literary strategy enabled radical experimentation with novelistic conventions. African American writers revised the tragic mulatta and mulatto characters by articulating a black-centered racial imaginary that infused the trope of passing with profound political and literary relevance. Deploying the high visibility of all-but-white characters as a screen to introduce new figures in American literature, they advanced a far from monolithic understanding of blackness that foregrounded its intraracial diversification and intersection with gender and class. African American writers adopted the trope of passing in order to expose the sociopolitical construction of “race,” unsettle prevailing racial epistemologies of blackness, popularize a more complex racial imaginary, and teach self-consciously critical modes of reading literature and, by extension, reality. Through a diachronic approach, the essay shows how the trope of passing was repurposed in different literary-historical periods and how it retains its relevance as a malleable literary strategy of cultural and political intervention.
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- Race in American Literature and Culture , pp. 165 - 178Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022