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Passing (Modern Library)
by Nella Larsen (Introduction: Ntozake Shange)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Modern Library (2000-11-28)
ISBN: 037550446X
EAN: 9780375504464
Dewy Decimal #: 813.52
Hardcover: 208 pages
Edition: Modern Library
Release Date: 2000-11-28
SKU: 080805002
Condition: Used: Like New
Comments: This First Printing copy is in excellent condition and just as it says, "like New". There is one flaw to copy, it is slightly slanted. Otherwise, No visible markings, highlights, underlining, tears to text. Tight spine. Clean Hard Cover and Dust Jacket with light shelf wear. Very interesting copy, worth having at an affordable price. (6H-16)
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
First published to critical acclaim in 1929, Passing firmly established Nella Larsen's prominence among women writers of the Harlem Renaissance. The Modern Library is proud to present Passing—an electrifying story of two women who cross the color line in 1920s New York—together with a new Introduction by the Obie Award- winning playwright and novelist Ntozake Shange.
Irene Redfield, the novel's protagonist, is a woman with an enviable life. She and her husband, Brian, a prominent physician, share a comfortable Harlem town house with their sons. Her work arranging charity balls that gather Harlem's elite creates a sense of purpose and respectability for Irene. But her hold on this world begins to slip the day she encounters Clare Kendry, a childhood friend with whom she had lost touch. Clare—light-skinned, beautiful, and charming—tells Irene how, after her father's death, she left behind the black neighborhood of her adolescence and began passing for white, hiding her true identity from everyone, including her racist husband. As Clare begins inserting herself into Irene's life, Irene is thrown into a panic, terrified of the consequences of Clare's dangerous behavior. And when Clare witnesses the vibrancy and energy of the community she left behind, her burning desire to come back threatens to shatter her careful deception.
Brilliantly plotted and elegantly written, Passing offers a gripping psychological portrait of emotional extremity. The New York Times Book Review called Larsen "adroit at tracing the involved processes of a mind divided against itself, that fights between the dictates of reason and desire." The Saturday Review of Literature said, "[Larsen] has produced a work so fine, sensitive, and distinguished that it rises above race categories and becomes that rare object, a good novel."
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Amazon.com Review
The heroine of Passing takes an elevator from the infernal August Chicago streets to the breezy rooftop of the heavenly Drayton Hotel, "wafted upward on a magic carpet to another world, pleasant, quiet, and strangely remote from the sizzling one that she had left below." Irene is black, but like her author, the Danish-African American Nella Larsen (a star of the 1920s to mid-1930s Harlem Renaissance and the first black woman to win a Guggenheim creative-writing award), she can "pass" in white society. Yet one woman in the tea room, "fair and golden, like a sunlit day," keeps staring at her, and eventually introduces herself as Irene's childhood friend Clare, who left their hometown 12 years before when her father died. Clare's father had been born "on the left hand"--he was the product of a legal marriage between a white man and a black woman and therefore cut off from his inheritance. So she was raised penniless by white racist relatives, and now she passes as white. Even Clare's violent white husband is in the dark about her past, though he teases her about her tan and affectionately calls her "Nig." He laughingly explains: "When we were first married, she was white as--as--well as white as a lily. But I declare she's getting darker and darker." As Larsen makes clear, Passing can also mean dying, and Clare is in peril of losing her identity and her life. The tale is simple on the surface--a few adventures in Chicago and New York's high life, with lots of real people and race-mixing events described (explicated by Thadious M. Davis's helpful introduction and footnotes). But underneath, it seethes with rage, guilt, sex, and complex deceptions. Irene fears losing her black husband to Clare, who seems increasingly predatory. Or is this all in Irene's mind? And is everyone wearing a mask? Larsen's book is a scary hall of mirrors, a murder mystery that can't resolve itself. It sticks with you. --Tim Appelo
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Customer Reviews
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On time as expected (as usual).
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-09-19
As always, I got the book within a week of ordering it. Great book for doing research.
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Passing
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-05-31
This is a story of two African American women who are able to pass as caucasian in the 1920s. A look at both sides of this issue. The ending is very interesting.
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Interesting subject matter
Rating (4)
Date: 2007-06-13
I had to read this book for an American Women Writers class in college. It was a very interesting read. I enjoyed the subject matter and history. It was something with which I was not very familiar. A good movie that covers this same topic of "passing" is the Human Stain -- very good movie.
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good price, good product
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-09-23
0 out of 14 customers found this reveiw helpful
very good price for book....for something that costs fifty cents, you'd think it would be in poor condition, but I believe that it was brand new and in perfect condition
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A view of the past
Rating (5)
Date: 2004-12-23
7 out of 7 customers found this reveiw helpful
Written in 1929, PASSING is a product of the Harlem Renaissance. Nella Larsen, a biracial woman, relates the story of Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry. Both are fair skinned black women who can pass for white and grow up together in a black neighborhood. When Clare is orphaned she moves with white relatives and deserts her black heritage. She sees it as the only means of escape from the poverty that she destest. She marries John Bellows, escaping her past and could have disappeared into the white world.
But through a chance meeting, where Irene is also passing for white, they meet after many years of separation. Irene has married a black doctor, who wants to move to Brazil and in effect pass as a latin American. He wants physically out of America while Irene wants out of the racial tensions of America.
Clare is drawn back to her racial roots by some mystery. She can't let go even though she knows it will be the end of her marriage and perhaps the loss of her daughter.
Clare's husband, John Bellows, is a avowed racist who calls Clare "Nig" because he jokes that she is getting darker, totally unaware of her race. Irene and another friend who is also passing endure Bellow's racist remarks but do not respond.
The book takes place over about a 2 year period as Clare flirts with the danger of discovery and also Irene's husband. Irene is in conflict as to whether to reveal the truth to John, which would get Clare out of her life. But she can't bring herself to do it.
The book tells of the conflict of being black and living white; it tells of the interracial circles of Harlem of the 1920's. It's a period of high racial tensions, but yet whites flock to Harlem because some see it as in vogue not because they seek an interracial culture.
Although Irene lives black, she has created a white world around herself. She doesn't want her sons to know about lynchings and racial issues.
At the end Clare makes a tragic choice. She chooses death over admitting that she is black. Of course, maybe that is what she wanted all the time - out of this false world. Irene gets her wish, she gets Clare out of her immediate life but she will never get her out of her memory.
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