The Passing Figure: Racial Confusion in Modern American LiteraturePeter Lang, 1996 - 142 pages How and when does literature most effectively uncover race to be a mataphor? The passing figure, a light-skinned African-American capable and willing to pass for white, provides the thematic focus to this provocative study. In exploring the social and cultural history of this distinctly American phenomenon, Bennett moves freely between literature, film, and music, arguing that the passing figure is crucial to our understanding of past and present conceptions of race. |
From inside the book
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Page 42
... plot of passing , was , if nothing else , a model of success . But surely the first two African - American novelists , Brown and Webb , were models for Craft and his ultimate passing plot . Although it would be impossible to imagine ...
... plot of passing , was , if nothing else , a model of success . But surely the first two African - American novelists , Brown and Webb , were models for Craft and his ultimate passing plot . Although it would be impossible to imagine ...
Page 98
... plot . It is only from the novelists associated with the Harlem Renaissance that passing becomes less of a plot device and more fully a subject worthy of psychological examination . James Weldon Johnson and Jean Toomer offered what ...
... plot . It is only from the novelists associated with the Harlem Renaissance that passing becomes less of a plot device and more fully a subject worthy of psychological examination . James Weldon Johnson and Jean Toomer offered what ...
Page 102
... plot might inform the other . Unlike the centrifugal movement of the various fragmented perspectives in As I Lay Dying and The Sound and Fury , the parts of Wild Palms and Light in August move centripetally , away from a cohesive unity ...
... plot might inform the other . Unlike the centrifugal movement of the various fragmented perspectives in As I Lay Dying and The Sound and Fury , the parts of Wild Palms and Light in August move centripetally , away from a cohesive unity ...
Contents
An Introduction to Passing | 1 |
Theme to Genre | 35 |
How White People Pass | 61 |
Copyright | |
3 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
The Passing Figure: Racial Confusion in Modern American Literature Juda Bennett No preview available - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
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