Description
Book SynopsisExamines constructions of racial identity through the exploration of passing narratives including forties jazz musician Mezz Mezzrow's memoir Really the Blues
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
