Mixed Race Studies

Comedy: American Style

Rutgers University Press
October 2009 (Originally Published in 1933)
304 pages
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-4632-2
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-4631-5

Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961)

Edited and with an Introduction by:

Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Professor of English
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Comedy: American Style, Jessie Redmon Fauset’s fourth and final novel, recounts the tragic tale of a family’s destruction—the story of a mother who denies her clan its heritage. Originally published in 1933, this intense narrative stands the test of time and continues to raise compelling, disturbing, and still contemporary themes of color prejudice and racial self-hatred. Several of today’s bestselling novelists echo subject matter first visited in Fauset’s commanding work, which overflows with rich, vivid, and complex characters who explore questions of color, passing, and black identity.

Cherene Sherrard-Johnson’s introduction places this literary classic in both the new modernist and transatlantic contexts and will be embraced by those interested in earlytwentieth-century women writers, novels about passing, the Harlem Renaissance, the black/white divide, and diaspora studies. Selected essays and poems penned by Fauset are also included, among them “Yarrow Revisited” and “Oriflamme,” which help highlight the full canon of her extraordinary contribution to literature and provide contextual background to the novel.

Passing as White: The Life Altering Effects on Loved Ones

Southern Connecticut State University
May 2006
122 pages
Publication Number: AAT 1435422
ISBN: 9780542641824

Kathleen Daubney

A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Master of Science

This thesis analyzes the theme of passing in Harlem Renaissance literature and deals with the consequences that such transitions to white society had on the passers’ friends and relatives. Choices that one person makes can have a domino and long lasting effect on his or her family and friends. This study focuses on: Passing by Nella Larsen, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man by James Weldon Johnson, “Passing,” by Langston Hughes, and Comedy: American Style and Plum Bun both by Jessie Fauset. This thesis discusses if the family and friends have knowledge of the passing, if they had a voice in the novel, and if the children had knowledge of their heritage. It also discusses the effects passing had on the families and friends of the passers, along with their responses.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• PASSING AS WHITE: THE LIFE ALTERING EFFECTS ON LOVED ONES
• FAUSET’S PLUM BUN: PASSING AND RETURNING
• LARSEN’S PASSING: ESCAPE, WEALTH, OR APPEARANCE
• THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLOURED MAN: WHITE, BLACK, WHITE?
• HUGHES “PASSING”: I LOVE YOU, BUT
• COMEDY AMERICAN STYLE: OLIVIA’S PASSING, THE FAMILY’S ESCAPE
• CONCLUSION: TO PASS OR NOT TO PASS
• REFERENCES

Purchase the dissertation here.

Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture

Oxford University Press
May 1997
356 pages
Paperback ISBN13: 9780195134186; ISBN10: 0195134184

Susan Gubar, Distinguished Professor Emerita and Ruth N. Halls Professor Emerita of English
Indiana University

When the actor Ted Danson appeared in blackface at a 1993 Friars Club roast, he ignited a firestorm of protest that landed him on the front pages of the newspapers, rebuked by everyone from talk show host Montel Williams to New York City’s then mayor, David Dinkins. Danson’s use of blackface was shocking, but was the furious pitch of the response a triumphant indication of how far society has progressed since the days when blackface performers were the toast of vaudeville, or was it also an uncomfortable reminder of how deep the chasm still is separating black and white America?

In Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture, Susan Gubar, who fundamentally changed the way we think about women’s literature as co-author of the acclaimed The Madwoman in the Attic, turns her attention to the incendiary issue of race. Through a far-reaching exploration of the long overlooked legacy of minstrelsy–cross-racial impersonations or “racechanges”—throughout modern American film, fiction, poetry, painting, photography, and journalism, she documents the indebtedness of “mainstream” artists to African-American culture, and explores the deeply conflicted psychology of white guilt. The fascinating “racechanges” Gubar discusses include whites posing as blacks and blacks “passing” for white; blackface on white actors in The Jazz Singer, Birth of a Nation, and other movies, as well as on the faces of black stage entertainers; African-American deployment of racechange imagery during the Harlem Renaissance, including the poetry of Anne Spencer, the black-and-white prints of Richard Bruce Nugent, and the early work of Zora Neale Hurston; white poets and novelists from Vachel Lindsay and Gertrude Stein to John Berryman and William Faulkner writing as if they were black; white artists and writers fascinated by hypersexualized stereotypes of black men; and nightmares and visions of the racechanged baby. Gubar shows that unlike African-Americans, who often are forced to adopt white masks to gain their rights, white people have chosen racial masquerades, which range from mockery and mimicry to an evolving emphasis on inter-racial mutuality and mutability.

Drawing on a stunning array of illustrations, including paintings, film stills, computer graphics, and even magazine morphings, Racechanges sheds new light on the persistent pervasiveness of racism and exciting aesthetic possibilities for lessening the distance between blacks and whites.

Quicksand and Passing

Rutgers University Press
1986
246 pages
Paper ISBN: 0-8135-1170-4

Nella Larsen (1891-1964)

Edited by

Deborah E. McDowell, Alice Griffin Professor of English
University of Virginia

Nella Larsen’s novels Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929) document the historical realities of Harlem in the 1920s and shed a bright light on the social world of the black bourgeoisie. The novels’ greatest appeal and achievement, however, is not sociological, but psychological. As noted in the editor’s comprehensive introduction, Larsen takes the theme of psychic dualism, so popular in Harlem Renaissance fiction, to a higher and more complex level, displaying a sophisticated understanding and penetrating analysis of black female psychology.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Notes to Introduction
• Selected Bibliography
• A Note on the Texts
• Quicksand
• Passing
• Explanatory Notes

Marcia Dawkins Booksigning

Eso Won Books
4327 Degnan Blvd (Leimert Park Business Center)
Los Angeles, California 90008
Phone: 323-290-1048
2012-09-12, 19:00-21:00 PDT (Local Time)

Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity by Marcia Alesan Dawkins. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2012, 285 pages. Hardback ISBN: 9781602583122.

Passing (def): usually understood as an abbreviation for “racial passing.” Describes the fact of being accepted, or categorized successfully as, a member of people classifed as white.

Clearly Invisible journeys to sometimes uncomfortable but unfailingly learned places as Dawkins retells the contemporary expressions and past experiences of individuals who pass as white people. Along the way these former non-white people’s stories sound familiar but take subtle turns to reveal tensions lurking beneath the surface, non-white people who ultimately expose as much about white supremacy/racism as they conceal about themselves.

Bring your questions, put on your thinking cap and enjoy this controversial topic.

For more information, click here.

Discovery of first black Harvard grad’s papers leads to as many questions as answers

Cable News Network (CNN)
2012-03-14

Stephanie Siek

(CNN) – The story of Richard Theodore Greener is a book with many blank pages. The first African-American to graduate from Harvard University in 1870, he was one of the foremost black thinkers of his time, rising to prominence between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois and praised by both. Greener was the dean of Howard University’s law school, a diplomat and also the University of South Carolina’s first black professor and head librarian.

The recent discovery of some of Greener’s papers in Chicago could fill in some of those pages. But the ironies of his life remain.

One daughter of this book-loving man and advocate for racial equality would go on to become the most respected librarian of her era and an expert on medieval illuminated manuscripts—but not as a woman of color. Belle Marian Greener, who was born to Greener and his first wife, Genevieve Ida Fleet, passed for white. Even lighter-skinned than her two light-skinned African-American parents, she changed her name to Belle da Costa Greene to reflect a fabricated Portuguese ancestry that would explain her complexion.

Portuguese ancestry that would explain her complexion.

After separating from Fleet, Greener accepted consular appointments in Bombay (now Mumbai), India and Vladivostok, Siberia, but neither Fleet nor their children joined him. Da Costa Greene burned most of her personal papers before her death in 1950, and except for a possible visit with her father after his retirement in Chicago, the degree to which she and Greener kept in contact is a mystery.

While working as an American consular official in Vladivostok in 1898, Greener began a relationship with a Japanese woman, Mishi Kawashima, with whom he had a daughter and two sons. He then had to leave them behind in Vladivostok in 1906, when he was the victim of a rumor campaign that resulted in his retirement.

It’s possible that racism played a role in his reasons for leaving the post, said Michael Mounter, a historian and research librarian at the University of South Carolina who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Greener. Among the rumors flying at the time, Mounter said, were that he “was drinking too much and had a Japanese mistress.”

“You had a group of white Americans living in Vladivostok and he originally went to social events with them,” said Mounter.  “He did not identify himself specifically as being black. He didn’t want to, he didn’t see the point in it.”

“One might say, ‘Well, he was passing for white.’ Others might say he just wanted to be judged on his own merits,” said Mounter…

Read the entire article here.

Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America

Oxford University Press
April 2011
240 pages
Hardback ISBN13: 9780195385854; ISBN10: 0195385853

Ayanna Thompson, Professor of English
Arizona State University

Notions, constructions, and performances of race continue to define the contemporary American experience, including America’s relationship to Shakespeare. In Passing Strange, Ayanna Thompson explores the myriad ways U.S. culture draws on the works and the mythology of the Bard to redefine the boundaries of the color line.

Drawing on an extensive—frequently unconventional—range of examples, Thompson examines the contact zones between constructions of Shakespeare and constructions of race. Among the questions she addresses are: Do Shakespeare’s plays need to be edited, appropriated, updated, or rewritten to affirm racial equality and retain relevance? Can discussions of Shakespeare’s universalism tell us anything beneficial about race? What advantages, if any, can a knowledge of Shakespeare provide to disadvantaged people of color, including those in prison? Do the answers to these questions impact our understandings of authorship, authority, and authenticity? In investigating this under-explored territory, Passing Strange examines a wide variety of contemporary texts, including films, novels, theatrical productions, YouTube videos, performances, and arts education programs.

Scholars, teachers, and performers will find a wealth of insights into the staging and performance of familiar plays, but they will also encounter new ways of viewing Shakespeare and American racial identity, enriching their understanding of each.

Features

• Productively engages a topic of perennial debate: race and Shakespeare
• Offers first sustained examination of the relationship between contemporary American constructions of Shakespeare and race
• Explores the seldom considered ways Shakespeare has infiltrated American popular culture, from films like the screwball comedy Bringing Down the House to DIY performances on YouTube

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction: The Passing Strangeness of Shakespeare in America
• 2. Universalism: Two Films that Brush with the Bard, Suture and Bringing Down the House
• 3. Essentialism: Meditations Inspired by Farrukh Dondy’s novel Black Swan
• 4. Multiculturalism: The Classics, Casting, and Confusion
• 5. Original(ity): Othello and Blackface
• 6. Reform: Redefining Authenticity in Shakespeare Reform Programs
• 7. Archives: Classroom-Inspired Performance Videos on YouTube
• 8. Conclusion: Passing Race and Passing Shakespeare in Peter Sellars’s Othello
• Works Cited
• Index

Reading The Human Stain through Charles W. Chesnutt: The Genre of the Passing Novel

Philip Roth Studies
Volume 2, Number 2 (Fall 2006)
pages 138-150
DOI: 10.1353/prs.2011.0066

Matthew Wilson, Professor of English and Humanities
Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg

This article historicizes The Human Stain, placing it in the genre of the passing novel. The analysis is filtered through a reading of Chesnutt’s passing fictions, particularly The House Behind the Cedars and The Quarry.

Philip Roth’s The Human Stain was published in 2000, the year I was on sabbatical writing my book, Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt. At the time, and even more subsequently, I was struck by the surprising continuities between the passing fictions ot Chesnutt and other writers of his era and Roth’s representation of race in The Human Stain. One of Chesnutt’s novels in particular, The House behind the Cedars (1900), helps us see that although exactly one hundred years separate these two texts, little has changed with regard to race in America. Despite the dismantling of the legal system of American racial apartheid that had its origin in Chesnutt s lifetime, the American racial imagination remains largely intact, and we continue to insist on our racial binary, continue to maintain and police the color line. As Judy Scales-Trent has observed. “[W]hite America expends enormous resources in school and in the media to teach (about) the intrinsic rightness” of the color line, so that it won’t questioned and so that future generations will continue to “stand guard” (481). Of course, the genre in which this standing guard is most obvious is the passing narrative because the liminality of the “white negro” (to use a nineteenth-century locution) calls into question the supposed impermeability of the color line. In this article, I use Chesnutt’s work, both fiction and nonfiction, as a way of approaching the issue of passing and race in The Human Stain, and of exploring the persistence of racial essentialism in American thinking and the responses to that essentialism that maintain the existence of the color line.

Before going on to discuss the issue of race in particular texts, I need to unpack the term “racial essentialism.” As Adrian Piper makes clear in her important esaay “Passing tor White, Passing for Black,” the function of racial…

Race

Poem via Poetry Foundation from:

Antebellum Dream Book
Graywolf Press
2001
72 pages
Paperback ISBN: 1-55597-354-X

Elizabeth Alexander

Sometimes I think about Great-Uncle Paul who left Tuskegee,
Alabama to become a forester in Oregon and in so doing
became fundamentally white for the rest of his life, except
when he traveled without his white wife to visit his siblings—
now in New York, now in Harlem, USA—just as pale-skinned,
as straight-haired, as blue-eyed as Paul, and black. Paul never told anyone
he was white, he just didn’t say that he was black, and who could imagine,
an Oregon forester in 1930 as anything other than white?…

Read the entire poem here.

Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, AD 1933-1940

Random House
1999 (Originally Published: 1931)
208 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-375-75380-0

George S. Schuyler (1895-1977)

Introduction by Ishmael Reed

What would happen to the race problem in America if black people turned white? Would everybody be happy? These questions and more are answered hilariously in Black No More, George S. Schuyler’s satiric romp. Black No More is the story of Max Disher, a dapper black rogue of an insurance man who, through a scientific transformation process, becomes Matthew Fisher, a white man. Matt dreams up a scam that allows him to become the leader of the Knights of Nordica, a white supremacist group, as well as to marry the white woman who rejected him when he was black. Black No More is a hysterical exploration of race and all its self-serving definitions. If you can’t beat them, turn into them.

Ishmael Reed, one of today’s top black satirists and the author of Mumbo Jumbo and Japanese by Spring, provides a spirited Introduction.

The fertile artistic period now known as the Harlem Renaissance (1920-1930) gave birth to many of the world-renowned masters of black literature and is the model for today’s renaissance of black writers.