Passing

Nella Larsen, a novelist of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote two brilliant novels that interrogated issues of gender and race. In Passing, her second novel published in 1929, she examines the troubled friendship between two mixed-race women who can pass as white. One, Irene Redfield, marries a black man and lives in Harlem, while the other, Clare Kendry, marries a bigoted white man. Clare re-enters Irene's life after an absence of many years and stirs up painful questions about identity. 

Begin this unit by viewing our presentation on Nella Larsen

Slides and Notes for the presentation on Nella Larsen

The Harlem Renaissance 

If you're not familiar with the Harlem Renaissance, do not pass go! Watch this wonderfully informative and amusing video from John Green's Crash Course to familiarize yourself with this important period in African-American artistic history.  The Harlem Renaissance was one of the richest, most vibrant, and most culturally generative artistic periods in American history and the work that emerged from that period continues to shape the landscape of American arts and letters today. In this episode, we’re going to explore some of the writers, artists, and musicians who turned Harlem into a world-renowned hub of art and culture and delve into the factors that brought them all together in the first place.

For more on passing as a cultural phenomenon, listen to this wonderful podcast by the ladies of Dig- A History Podcast "A History of Racial Passing" published by historian, Sarah Handley Cousins of the University of Buffalo.

Complete Text of Nella Larsen's Passing

Complete Audiobook of Nella Larsen's Passing

Peer Reviewed Articles on Nella Larsen's Passing

Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). Peer review methods are used to maintain quality standards, improve performance, and provide credibility. In academia, scholarly peer review is often used to determine an academic paper's suitability for publication. In a typical semester, students would be required to retrieve peer reviewed articles from the BMCC library for use in this course themselves. However, given the abbreviated nature of this class, the research for an annotated bibliography activity and Paper 2 has been done for you. 

You are not responsible for reading all of the attached articles!! Please review the annotated bibliography activity in Exit Ticket 2 and Paper 2 before choosing the two articles that fit your interests best. 

Find below both the articles for the annotated bibliography activity and Paper 2 and MLA 9 citations for your Works Cited pages.

Article 1:

“The Veils of the Law: Race and Sexuality in Nella Larsen’s Passing.”

A critical reading of Nella Larsen's second and last novel, 'Passing,' shows how she dealt with racial and sexual orientation issues. The term, passing, is explained within the context of both problems to clarify how Larsen integrates the two. Interracial sexual interaction, which US institutions have systematically suppressed, is also a theme in 'Passing.' The analysis is also correlated to several court cases regarding race and homosexuality.

Citation:

Blackmer, Corinne E. “The Veils of the Law: Race and Sexuality in Nella Larsen’s Passing.” College Literature, vol. 22, no. 3, 1995, pp. 50–67.

Article 2:

“‘That Unreasonable Restless Feeling’: The Homosexual Subtexts of Nella Larsen’s Passing.”

Nella Larsen's 'Passing' tells the story of characters attempting to break out of the strictures of repressive bourgeois life, but critics have rarely recognized the homosexual subplot within the text. Irene and Clare's relationship is often characterized by unrecognized sexual desire and Brian's need to go to Brazil may very well be related to the sexual freedom there rather than just the racial freedom. Both marriages in the novel are portrayed as sexless while suggestions of a lesbian relationship abound.

Citation:

Blackmore, David L. “‘That Unreasonable Restless Feeling’: The Homosexual Subtexts of Nella Larsen’s Passing.” African American Review, vol. 26, no. 3, 1992, pp. 475–84, https://doi.org/10.2307/3041919.

Article 3:

“Passing for What? Aspects of Identity in Nella Larsen’s Novels.”

Larsen's most striking insights are into psychic dilemmas confronting certain black women. To dramatize these, Larsen draws characters who are atypical in the extreme by their appearance, education, and social class. Swiftly viewed, they resemble the tragic mulattoes of literary convention. On closer examination, they become the means through which the author demonstrates the psychological costs of racism and sexism.

Citation:

Wall, Cheryl A. “Passing for What? Aspects of Identity in Nella Larsen’s Novels.” Black American Literature Forum, vol. 20, no. 1/2, 1986, pp. 97–111, https://doi.org/10.2307/2904554.

Article 3:

“Clare Kendry’s ‘True’ Colors: Race and Class Conflict in Nella Larsen’s Passing.” 

Nella Larsen's "Passing" is reexamined as a work concerned with the simultaneous representation and construction of race and class within a circumscribed community. The character Clare Kendry represents a different ideology locked in a struggle for dominance with the character Irene Redfield.

Citation:

Brody, Jennifer DeVere. “Clare Kendry’s ‘True’ Colors: Race and Class Conflict in Nella Larsen’s Passing.” Callaloo, vol. 15, no. 4, 1992, pp. 1053–65, https://doi.org/10.2307/2931920.

Article 4:

"Seeing Black Women Anew through Lesbian Desire in Nella Larsen's Passing"

This essay explores Nella Larsen's revision of images of mulatto women in Harlem Renaissance novels. Larsen reveals her female characters' imprisonment by a false belief that whites and men are innocent and women of mixed ethnicity always culpable. Larsen traces this blame of women back to Harlem Renaissance novels. In response, she revises the traditional erotic triangle. For Larsen, women of mixed ethnicity see each other outside of a culture of blame only when men play a diminished role within the triangle. Then, they recognize their own worth through fetishization of each other's body, particularly its blackness, within the triangle.

Citation:

Landry, H. Jordan. “Seeing Black Women Anew through Lesbian Desire in Nella Larsen’s Passing.” Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, vol. 60, no. 1, 2006, pp. 25–52, https://doi.org/10.2307/4143877.

Article 5: 

"Passing: Race, Identification, and Desire"

Nella Larsen's 1929 novella, Passing, the text under discussion in this essay, can thus be seen as the inheritor and perpetuator of a long tradition of such narratives. In recent years, Larsen's text has become the most celebrated instance of a story about passing in African-American literature, eclipsing the tradition that preceded it. This is not coincidental, for Larsen is a master of ambiguity and intrigue, and the enigmatic finale of her novella has generated heated debates and countless interpretations.

Citation:

Rottenberg, Catherine. “‘Passing’: Race, Identification, and Desire.” Criticism (Detroit), vol. 45, no. 4, 2003, pp. 435–52, https://doi.org/10.1353/crt.2004.0025.