African-American couple who endure social os-
tracism because their difference in skin tone
prompts others to regard them as an interracial
couple. Larsen’s novel, Passing,is a gripping tale of
two women and former friends whose decisions
about race and the different ways in which they
grapple with social bias and their own desires.
In addition to emerging as a significant theme
in Harlem Renaissance literature, passing also func-
tioned as a political tool during the period. Writers
and activists such as Walter White used their abil-
ity to pass to secure evidence against white
supremacists and the KUKLUXKLAN. As a member
of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE AD-
VANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, the blond-
haired and blue-eyed African-American White
infiltrated Klan rallies, lynchings, and mobs to
gather information and facts to support antilynch-
ing protests and activism. Activists such as LOUISE
THOMPSON, frustrated by prejudice against people
of African descent and the inability to obtain em-
ployment, passed for Mexican and obtained work
as a secretary in San Francisco. Others, such as
WARINGCUNEY, impersonated foreigners on occa-
sion to secure lodging. With his friend LANGSTON
HUGHES, Cuney also was known for his playful
public impersonations of foreigners and audible
use of other languages meant to corroborate his
impersonations.
Bibliography
Ginsberg, Elaine, ed. Passing and the Fictions of Identity.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996.
Pfeiffer, Kathleen. Race Passing and American Individual-
ism.Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
2003.
Sollors, Werner. Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: The-
matic Explorations of Interracial Literature.New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997.
Wald, Gayle. Crossing The Line: Racial Passing in Twenti-
eth Century U.S. Literature.Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 2000.
PassingNella Larsen(1929)
The second of two novels by NELLALARSEN, the
first African-American woman to win a GUGGEN-
HEIMFELLOWSHIP. Published by the NEWYORK
CITYcompany Alfred Knopf and originally entitled
Nig,the novel emerged in April 1929 under the less
explosive but still provocative title, Passing.Larsen
dedicated the novel to CARLVANVECHTENand
his wife FANIAMARINOFF, both of whom supported
her literary efforts and with whom Larsen and her
husband, Elmer Imes, socialized often.
Passingbegins with a tantalizing epigraph from
COUNTEECULLEN’s poem “Heritage” and the lines
“One three centuries removed / From the scenes
his father loved, / Spicy grove, cinnamon tree, /
What is Africa to me?” The lines set the stage for a
story about a quest for self-definition, reunion, and
an affirming racial identity. The story, which is or-
ganized into three sections entitled “Encounter,”
“Re-Encounter,” and “Finale,” centers on two
women, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry. Both
women are light-skinned African Americans and
able to pass for white should they choose to do so.
When the two meet each other after a separation
of many years, they are both passing. Redfield, who
has established herself in a stable, middle-class
African-American world, passes only occasionally
and only when it is socially convenient for her. Her
childhood friend Clare, however, has committed
wholly to the white world and even married a man
with racist views. Clare has survived a much more
tumultuous background than her former friend.
The orphaned daughter of Bob Kendry, an alco-
holic prone to violent outbursts, she becomes the
ward of two great-aunts who essentially treat her
not as kin but as a live-in domestic. The novel
opens with Irene’s recollections of Clare, a young
girl whom she imagines as “[c]atlike” and period-
ically “hard and apparently without feeling at all;
sometimes... affectionate and rashly impulsive...
capable of scratching, and very effectively too”
who also possessed “an amazing soft malice, hidden
well away until provoked” (7).
Prompted by a profound loneliness and desire
to see her friend, Clare initiates the reunion be-
tween herself and Irene. In a passionate and un-
self-conscious letter to Irene, she confesses, “For I
am lonely, so lonely... cannot help longing to be
with you again, as I have never longed for any-
thing before; and I have wanted many things in
my life” (8).
The tension of the novel increases when the
two women and their respective spouses recon-
nect. Clare, who has been living life as the white414 Passing