Passing (Nella Larsen, 1929)

...wow.

For a thin volume like Passing, which is all over in a mere 120 pages, there's a lot of stuff to chew on, and I know from the start that I'm probably not especially qualified to talk about much of what's going on here.  There's this thing called white privilege, you see, and, well...  Yeah.

It's probably best to start with the title, "Passing".  I became most familiar with this particular definition of the verb through the trans* context, where it refers to the act of looking enough like your correct gender that a stranger wouldn't know you're trans*; the term is used here in the earlier racial context, specifically in terms of pale-skinned Black folk who are able to "pass" as being White.  Even people like me, who have no experience of being on the receiving end of racism, can see what the point of that would be, especially in the 1920s, but also, well...  motions at the need for the Black Lives Matter movement to exist

The lead characters in Passing are Irene, a pale Black woman (her skin is described as "olive") who grew up in Chicago but now lives in Harlem; and Clare, similarly pale-skinned, who grew up alongside Irene until her father died, then was shuffled off to live with a couple of White aunts until she got herself married to get out from under their thumbs.  Her husband has no idea she's not pure White, which seems to be rather playing with fire on Clare's part, given that he is incredibly racist.

The book follows a three-act structure, with sections titled "Encounter", "Re-Encounter", and "Finale".  The first is largely a flashback to Irene and Clare's first time encountering each other as adults.  Irene is in Chicago to visit her father and old family friends, and happens to encounter Clare while taking tea at one of the higher-class hotels (choosing to "pass" for that moment).  Clare is so far into her façade that Irene doesn't recognize her, while the reverse is anything but true; it takes a minute of trying to figure out where she might have met this White woman who knows her childhood nickname, and in fact Clare laughing, for Irene to figure it out.

Clare's separation from the Chicago neighborhood (and in fact all of Black culture) is so complete that it has become a sort of forbidden desire to get news, to attend gatherings, to surround herself with the Blackness that she very intentionally left behind.  This becomes particularly problematic when Irene is introduced to Clare's husband, a truly unlikable character who makes it clear that he so proud to have no N-----s in his family and he knows the whole race better than they know themselves because he only believes the negative things he's heard or read.  Irene holds her tongue, but only barely, and decides to cut off contact with Clare altogether.

This would work fine, right up until Clare shows up at her door in Harlem.

The second half of the book deals with Clare's increasing insertion of herself into every Black cultural event she can manage while hiding it from her husband, and the increasing irritation and outright anger that this causes Irene to feel.  Everything builds to a breaking point as Clare's intrusions start to appear to include an illicit romance with Irene's husband... And then Clare's husband encounters and recognises Irene shopping with another Black woman, and, well...  Things do not end well.

Clare is almost a sort of Icarus figure, here.  She has, through a combination of happenstance and pluck, a way to escape the racism inherent in the system; she's unable to resist the temptation to go beyond the safe limits of that escape, though, to try to safely get back the heritage that she has left behind. Ultimately, that hubris, her playing with fire and disregard of the warnings that Irene initially gives her, ends up destroying her.

Irene, meanwhile, knows her limits.  She's playing a somewhat dangerous game of her own, using her children as a way to hold back some of her husband's ambitions, but she's much more careful about it, keeping within her means and only starting to act in less than well-thought-out ways than Clare has pushed her to the breaking point.  The growing resentment in Irene is quite obvious in the narration; while the novel is told in the third person, everything is through Irene's point of view, her head the only one we ever inhabit.

I'm going to admit, there is a lot that I'm sure I missed here.  Even with the usual Penguin Classics introduction and endnotes, I'm about as far from having an understanding of the cultural politics here as it's possible to be.  I can look at what's in the text, and draw my own conclusions, and it does give me some understanding of the author's own viewpoint (Larsen herself being pale-skinned Black), but I'm ultimately not going to be able to appreciate this in the way that a Black reader, or indeed a reader from any outwardly visible minority group, is going to be able to.

My own first-hand experiences as far as "passing" goes are limited to situations where my neurodivergent mind has gotten in the way of what might be considered "normal," and that's usually situations where I'm failing to "pass".  Not having even realized that I'm not neurotypical until relatively recently didn't help, of course.  It does give me at least a little insight into why someone would want to hide aspects of themselves for the sake of making life easier, but it's still not the same experience.

I'm glad that I read this, though.  All too often, the "classics" are overwhelmingly things written by white guys in Europe, and this was a marvelous change of pace, even if it's nowhere near a "feel-good" book.  But then, how many of the books that are really worth reading are?