Great Books: Emily Bernard on Larsen's "Passing"

New Books in African American Studies · Feb 18, 2020 · 1h 5m

Nella Larsen's gripping 1929 novel Passing recounts the fateful encounter, first on a fancy Chicago hotel rooftop restaurant on a sweltering August afternoon and later in New York City, of two women who grew up together and then lost touch, and who can pass from being black to white, and back again -- with devastating moral and social consequences. The book examines the American mythology of race, and its real-world effects, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance and during a time when racial segregation regulated the lives of all Americans and severely disadvantaged African-Americans in…