Mixed Race Studies

Racial Passing in American Life

The Hill Center
Washington, D.C.
2016-05-10

Lisa Page, Director of Creative Writing at The George Washington University, and co-editor of the forthcoming anthology, #Passing, moderates a discussion with Dr. Allyson Hobbs. Hobbs is an assistant professor of American history at Stanford University. She is the author of A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life.

Paperback Row

Book Review
The New York Times
2016-04-29

Joumana Khatib

Seven new paperbacks to check out this week…

…A CHOSEN EXILE: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, by Allyson Hobbs. (Harvard University, $16.95.) People who chose to “pass” were intentionally clandestine and left few clues of their histories, but here, Hobbs, a historian at Stanford, delves into the fraught history of African-Americans who passed as white in the 19th and 20th centuries, with a focus on the black families and identities that were left behind…

Read the entire article here.

“We assigned [Allyson] Hobbs’s book [A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life] because we thought it was a model for writing cultural history – it is beautifully crafted and draws on sources in very clear ways to tell its story. We hoped to inspire our history students to commit themselves in similar ways to telling the stories of people who are often lost to history,” —Colgate University Assistant Professor of History Daniel Bouk

Megan Leo, “Uncovering Hidden Histories: Hobbs Discusses Her Award-Winning Book,” The Colgate Maroon-News, March 31, 2016. http://www.thecolgatemaroonnews.com/news/article_f2fab440-f757-11e5-9c94-cb38fb52fc0d.html.

Uncovering Hidden Histories: Hobbs Discusses Her Award-Winning Book

The Colgate Maroon-News
Hamilton, New York
2016-03-31

Megan Leo, Section Editor

On Monday, March 21, Colgate students and faculty gathered in the Persson Auditorium to listen to Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University Allyson Hobbs, who gave a lecture about her book A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life.

Racial passing occurs when a member of a certain racial group is also accepted as a member of another racial group. In the context of her book and lecture, Hobbs specifically examined the phenomenon of African Americans passing as Caucasian to escape systematic racism in the United States.

“[Passing is fundamentally] a social act, with enormous social consequences,” Hobbs said…

…Assistant Professor of History Daniel Bouk was instrumental in bringing Hobbs to speak at Colgate.

“Professor Heather Roller and I dreamed up a plan of inviting Professor Hobbs out to campus after we decided to assign her book to both our introductory history workshop classes and our senior honors seminar. We were thrilled when Hobbs said yes and when we won the support of the History Department, the Africana and Latin American Studies Program and the Sio Chair in Diversity in Community, which made the visit possible,” Bouk said.

Bouk provided some background as to why he made the decision to assign A Chosen Exile to Colgate students.

“We assigned Hobbs’s book because we thought it was a model for writing cultural history – it is beautifully crafted and draws on sources in very clear ways to tell its story. We hoped to inspire our history students to commit themselves in similar ways to telling the stories of people who are often lost to history,” Bouk said…

Read the entire article here.

Allyson Hobbs discusses A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Monday, 2016-04-11, 19:00 EDT (Local Time)

Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University Allyson Hobbs discusses the paperback release of her book A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life.

About A Chosen Exile

Countless African Americans have passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and communities. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile. This history of passing explores the possibilities, challenges, and losses that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions.

For more information, click here.

Allyson Hobbs, A Chosen Exile, in conversation with Helena Brantley

Kepler’s Books
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, California 94025
Tuesday, 2016-03-15, 19:30 PDT (Local Time)

Presented by Peninsula Arts & Letters and Kepler’s Books

Join us for a look back at the history of racial passing, and a topical discussion of race and identity problems in America today.

For centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community, almost always for the benefits of expanded opportunity and mobility. But along with these brighter possibilities came grief, loneliness, and isolation that often outweighed the rewards. A Chosen Exile is a beautiful, extensively researched book, with historical photographs and over 82 pages of notes.

As racial relations in America have evolved so has the significance of passing. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. After emancipation, many African Americans came to regard passing as a form of betrayal, a selling of one’s birthright. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on one’s own.

Allyson Hobbs is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Stanford. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and she received a Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Chicago. Hobbs teaches courses on African-American history, African-American women’s history and 20th century American history. Her research interests include American social and cultural history, racial mixture, identity formation, migration and urbanization, and the intersections of race, class and gender.

Helena Brantley is the founder of Red Pencil Publicity + Marketing, working with both publishers and authors. Previously, she managed publicity campaigns for HarperCollins. She is a proud alumna of the Stanford Publishing Course. Helena tweets and posts about books and other interesting things on Twitter and Instagram.

For more information, click here.

Speaker: Allyson Hobbs

Colgate University
27 Persson Hall
13 Oak Drive
Hamilton, New York 13346
Monday, 2016-03-21, 16:15-18:15 EDT (Local Time)

Contact: Diane English 315-228-7511

Guest speaker Allyson Hobbs, Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Stanford University will give a lecture entitled: “A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life”, Monday, March 21, 4:15-5:45 pm, in 27 Persson Hall. Her revelatory work of history explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions and it also tells a tale of loss. Hobbs teaches at Stanford University and writes for the New Yorker. Her book was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, a “Best Book of 2014” by the San Francisco Chronicle, and a “Book of the Week” by the Times Higher Education in London. The Root name A Chosen Exile as one of the “Best 15 Nonfiction Books by Black Authors in 2014.”

For more information, click here.

A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life

Emory University
2016-02-18

In this Race and Difference Colloquium, Allyson Hobbs, an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Stanford University, discusses her first book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, published by Harvard University Press in October 2014. The book examines the phenomenon of racial passing in the United States from the late eighteenth century to the present. A Chosen Exile won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award for best first book in American History and the Lawrence Levine Award for best book in American cultural history.

The Race and Difference Colloquium Series is sponsored by the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference, which supports research, teaching, and public dialogue that examine race and intersecting dimensions of human difference including but not limited to class, gender, religion, and sexuality.

Allyson Hobbs: A Chosen Exile

Miami University
Room 1 Upham Hall
100 Bishop Circle
Oxford, Ohio 45056
Thursday, 2016-02-25, 17:00 EST (Local Time)

The E.E. McClellan Lecture in History

Allyson Hobbs is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Stanford University. Her book A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, published by Harvard University Press in 2014, examines the phenomenon of racial passing in the United States from the late eighteenth century to the present.

The book is winner of both the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for the best first book in American history and the Lawrence Levine Prize for best book in American cultural history from the Organization of American Historians.

Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. It was a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and the leap into another. Hobbs’s revelatory history of passing explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions, and also tells a tale of loss.

As racial relations in America have evolved, so has the significance of passing. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. After emancipation, many African Americans came to regard passing as a form of betrayal, a selling of one’s birthright. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on one’s own…

For more information, click here.

Storytelling matters to Stanford historian Allyson Hobbs

Stanford News
Stanford University, Stanford, California
2016-02-19

Kate Chesley, Associate Director of University Communications

Allyson Hobbs and her award-winning book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life

ALLYSON HOBBS, assistant professor of American history, finds much of the inspiration for her research in the stories of her own remarkable family. Telling those stories – and connecting them with larger themes in U.S. history – is one of the things that matters most to her.

Hobbs was the featured speaker recently at the popular “What Matters to Me and Why” noontime discussion series, sponsored by the Office for Religious Life. The series asks members of the Stanford community to reflect on matters of personal values and beliefs.

Hobbs is the author of A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, published by Harvard University Press in 2014. The book, which won the 2015 Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for best first book in American history and the 2015 Lawrence Levine Prize for best book in American cultural history, was inspired by a story Hobbs’ beloved aunt told her about a distant cousin.

That cousin, Hobbs told the audience, was born on the South Side of Chicago in the 1920s. Light skinned, the cousin was forced by her mother to leave her home and pass for white in Los Angeles. Hobbs told the heartbreaking story of how the cousin, married to a white man and raising children who were unaware of their mother’s heritage, was unable to return to Chicago to see her dying father lest her secret be revealed…

Read the entire article here.