Description
Book SynopsisSuitable for the scholars of American studies, African American studies, cultural studies, and literary criticism, this title uses cultural narratives of passing to illuminate both the contradictions of race and the deployment of such contradictions for a variety of needs, interests, and desires.
Trade Review“
Crossing the Line offers a superbly well-developed analysis of narratives of racial passing and a strategy for engaging such narratives. It will set the standard for subsequent treatments of racial passing.”—Dana Nelson, author of
National Manhood: Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men“Deeply engaging, well-researched, and effective,
Crossing the Line is a fine multidisciplinary study not only of passing narratives but of the social, political, and economic struggles that they negotiate in racial terms.”—
Priscilla Wald, author of
Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative FormTable of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Race, Passing, and Cultural Representation
1. Home Again: Racial Negotiations in Modernist African American Passing Narratives
2. Mezz Mezzrow and the Voluntary Negro Blues
3. Boundaries Lost and Found: Racial Passing and Cinematic Representation, circa 1949
4. “I’m Through with Passing”: Postpassing Narratives in Black Popular Literary Culture
5. “A Most Disagreeable Mirror”: Reflections on White Identity in
Black Like Me Epilogue: Passing, “Color Blindness,” and Contemporary Discourses of Race and Identity
Notes
Bibliography
Index
