BLM resources: Nella Larson’s ‘Passing’Posted in Articles, Book/Video Reviews, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2020-08-28 23:54Z by Steven |
BLM resources: Nella Larson’s ‘Passing’
Palatinate: Durham’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1948
Durham, United Kingdom
2020-07-28
Anna De Vivo
Image: Thomas E. Askew via U.S. Library of Congress
‘She was caught between two allegiances, different, yet the same. Herself. Her race. Race! The thing that bound and suffocated her.’ Written in 1929 but still pertinent to this day, Nella Larsen’s Passing centres around two biracial women, and explores racial identity, racism, and white privilege –significant concerns which have been propelled after the surge of global support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Racial passing is when one member of a racial group is accepted or passes as another member of a different racial category, which both protagonists of this novella undergo. The idea of racial passing gained prominence in post-Civil War America, where previously enslaved African Americans could construct a new identity and thereby evade legal and cultural oppression based on race. In essence, passing could become a tool to create a new white identity.
In Passing, after a chance encounter in the segregated Drayton Hotel in Chicago, Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield, the two protagonists, reunite after twelve years. Both women grew up together. Both women are of African American and white heritage, yet both women pass as white. But there is one significant difference: whilst Irene embraces her racial identity and passes only when she feels necessary, Clare assimilates into a white identity and marries John Bellew, her rich but racist husband…
Read the entire article here.