Passing

Nella Larsen

Description

Nella Larsen’s 1929 novella follows friends Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, two black women who pass as white. Their anxieties about passing culminate in tragedy, revealing the powerful repercussions of hiding one’s identity. Nearly a century later, Larsen’s exploration of race remains urgent and relevant as ever.

Sujets

• Classics
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Chemeketa Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781943536788
• Langue: English

Extrait

P ASSING
NELLA LARSEN
with an introduction by Matthew Hodgson
Passing
ISBN: 978-1-943536-42-9
2018 by Chemeketa Community College. All rights reserved.
Introduction 2018 by Matthew Hodgson. Used by permission.
Chemeketa Press is a nonprofit publishing endeavor at Chemeketa Community College that works with faculty, staff, and students to create affordable and effective alternatives to commercial textbooks. All proceeds from the sales of this textbook go toward the development of new textbooks.
To learn more, visit www.chemeketapress.org .
Publisher : Tim Rogers
Managing Editor : Steve Richardson
Production Editor : Brian Mosher
Manuscript Editor : Stephanie Lenox
Design Editor : Ronald Cox IV
Cover Illustration : Isaac Mitchell
Interior Design : Vasily Bodunov
Additional contributions to the design and publication of this textbook came from students in the Visual Communications program at Chemeketa Community College.
This text follows the 1929 edition of Passing , first published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York and London. It is in the public domain because its copyright was not renewed when it expired. This edition retains the original spelling of words, such as kerb and favourite, but has standardized word divisions, such as changing week end to weekend.
Printed in the United States of America.
Contents
Introduction
Leading Questions
P ASSING
Part One - Encounter
Part Two - Re-Encounter
Part Three - Finale
Introduction
I was first assigned Nella Larsen s 1929 novella Passing as an undergraduate at a small liberal arts college. Most of my classmates there came from wealthy, liberal backgrounds-the exact opposite of my conservative, working-class upbringing. I immediately felt out of place, which unfortunately manifested itself in resistance to anything my classmates said or believed. So, when my professor introduced the text within the context of racism and racial passing, I became irritated. I had been raised to believe that racial discrimination and bigotry were all in the past, so why was it even necessary for us to think about it in this literature class? Hadn t we already covered these topics in history class? And what is racial passing ? Couldn t we read about something that s actually relevant ? I m embarrassed to say this now, but I tuned out for the rest of that day s discussion.
Ending class, the professor encouraged us to apply the issues encountered in the novella to our own experiences. In spite of my initial resistance, I felt a curious connection to the main characters, Clare and Irene. When Clare s husband, John Bellew, appears later in the novella, I recognized his open discrimination as uncomfortably familiar. I finally understood that Clare and Irene s racial passing-the act of adopting an identity of a typically more privileged race-was not only a matter of gaining privilege, it was a matter of survival. This was particularly true for Clare, whose husband openly hated African Americans.
Clare and Irene s act of passing was not only about race. Passing (or trying to pass) can be a means of causing the least amount of tension. For example, I could see how my own passing as heterosexual in my strictly Lutheran family was an attempt to avoid conflict. I finally had a term for it. I now understood that others did this as well, for different reasons. This discomfort with one s identity was painfully familiar territory. Ultimately, Passing offered me the first opportunity to recognize two important aspects of my own identity: 1) my own privilege as a white male and 2) that I have also passed in various contexts. At an even deeper level, the book helped me better understand my own privilege in relation to others.
Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist , writes in her 2012 essay Peculiar Benefits that at some point, you have to surrender to the kinds of privilege you hold because everyone has something someone else doesn t. Rather than ignoring or denying privilege, Gay suggests that we stop fighting it. By surrendering, we accept that we do not know everything. Almost a century after Passing , we are still dealing with issues of discrimination and privilege. Even though some of Larsen s characters have inherent privilege, and others pass to earn privilege, each does have something that someone else doesn t.
I am thrilled to now have the opportunity to teach literature to a diverse group of community college students, primarily so I can introduce them to Passing . That said, I don t ever want to claim that I actually teach literature. Literature itself does the teaching. Think of me as a guide-not one who hovers and tells you exactly where to go or what to do. In this introduction and the questions that follow, I offer a small amount of direction. I encourage readers to get lost, even better if it s down a path that I have never explored. In Passing , readers can find a unique connection with the characters depending on their own experience of shifting between identities. Perhaps they know what it s like to reside within a shell of an identity with which they do not truly identify, as I had done for so many years.
Discrimination continues. We see more and more discrimination as policy changes promote fear of anything that does not strictly adhere to one s concept of normal, ignoring and marginalizing entire communities. Though we may not experience passing in the same way as Clare and Irene do in Larsen s novella, the desire to belong remains an essential part of human nature. Literature teaches us to look beneath the surface of our daily interactions. Literature teaches us the complexity of identity and the stories we tell about who we are-as individuals and as communities. Literature teaches us to move past fear and to practice empathy instead.
The goal in this introduction is not to analyze every major plot point in Passing , as some introductions do. Instead, I want to share my relationship with the book and why it was and still is significant to me. My hope is in telling you this that you will be able to enter into Larsen s story with some of your own experiences in mind. I want you to read this text and build your own, unique relationship with it. I want you to examine not how meaningful this text was when it was written (though this is, of course, significant as well). I urge you to examine this text in the context of today. In what ways has our society changed over time? Or, could the events in Larsen s novel just as easily happen today?
Matthew Hodgson
Chemeketa Community College
Leading Questions
1. In Nella Larsen s Passing , evaluate what you know or don t know about the setting, the time period, and the relationships between the characters and the spaces they inhabit. How does that influence your understanding or interpretation of the story?
2. When do you imagine the story takes place based on the language used? What words in particular stand out to you as evidence?
3. How do the descriptions of place and people inform your understanding about the setting and time period?
4. As you meet new characters, notice how Larsen introduces them. What does she actually reveal about the character? Do you get to know the character by name or by description first? In what way does this influence your understanding of that character s role in the story?
5. When characters interact with each other, what do you learn about their relationship based on the interaction? What details within the story give you this impression? How do you come to realize the relationship is significant?
P ASSING
For
Carl Van Vechten
and
Fania Marinoff
One Three centuries removed From the scenes his fathers loved, Spicy grove, cinnamon tree, What is Africa to me?
-Count e Cullen
Part One

Encounter
One
It was the last letter in Irene Redfield s little pile of morning mail. After her other ordinary and clearly directed letters the long envelope of thin Italian paper with its almost illegible scrawl seemed out of place and alien. And there was, too, something mysterious and slightly furtive about it. A thin sly thing which bore no return address to betray the sender. Not that she hadn t immediately known who its sender was. Some two years ago she had one very like it in outward appearance. Furtive, but yet in some peculiar, determined way a little flaunting. Purple ink. Foreign paper of extraordinary size.
It had been, Irene noted, postmarked in New York the day before. Her brows came together in a tiny frown. The frown, however, was more from perplexity than from annoyance; though there was in her thoughts an element of both. She was wholly unable to comprehend such an attitude towards danger as she was sure the letter s contents would reveal; and she disliked the idea of opening and reading it.
This, she reflected, was of a piece with all that she knew of Clare Kendry. Stepping always on the edge of danger. Always aware, but not drawing back or turning aside. Certainly not because of any alarms or feeling of outrage on the part of others.
And for a swift moment Irene Redfield seemed to see a pale small girl sitting on a ragged blue sofa, sewing pieces of bright red cloth together, while her drunken father, a tall, powerfully built man, raged threateningly up and down the shabby room, bellowing curses and making spasmodic lunges at her which were not the less frightening because they were, for the most part. Ineffectual. Sometimes he did manage to reach her. But only the fact that the child had edged herself and her poor sewing over to the farthermost corner of the sofa suggested that she was in any way perturbed by this menace to herself and her work.
Clare had known well enough that it was unsafe to take a portion of the dollar that was her weekly wage for the doing of many errands for the dressmaker who lived on the top floor of the building of which Bob Kendry was janitor. But that knowledge had not deterred her. She wanted to go to her Sunday school s picnic,