Passing

By Nella Larsen

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‘She wished to find out about this hazardous business of “passing,” this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one’s chance in another environment…’

The elegant Clare Kendry glides through New York’s high-society circles with ease, until the day she is reacquainted with her childhood friend, Irene. Clare chooses to ‘pass’ as white, hiding her African American heritage from her bigoted husband, while Irene leads a life that embraces it. As both women observe the other, a relationship of mutual fascination, obsession and secrets begins, one that will end in devastating circumstances.

Published in 1929, Nella Larsen’s Passing lays bare the complexities of identity, race, class and gender. The novella established Larsen as one of the most important female authors in American literature and is considered a literary masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance era.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Sep 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9780008554293

Nella Larsen

Nella Larsen (1891–1964) was an author, nurse, and librarian best known for her contributions to the Harlem Renaissance. Born to a Danish mother and Afro-Caribbean father in South Chicago, Larsen's life would be seemingly marked by her mixed-race heritage. Too Black for white spaces and not quite Black enough for Black spaces, Larsen would find herself constantly at odds in terms of her identity and belonging. First after the death of her biological father, where she would see her mother be remarried to a white man, have a white half-sibling and move to a mostly white neighborhood; next when she would seek a higher education at Fisk University, a historically Black college where she was unable to relate to the experience of her Black peers, and finally in her adult life in New York where she faced difficulties both professionally and socially. In 1914, Larsen would enroll at a nursing school that was heavily segregated and while working as a nurse two years later was employed in mostly white neighborhoods. She would marry Elmer Imes, the second African American to earn a PhD in psychics, in 1919 which–in addition to the couple's move to Harlem–introduced her to the Black professional class; however still, Larsen's near-European ancestry and lack of a formal degree alienated her from Black contemporaries of the times such as Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and James Weldon Johnson. Larsen would begin to pursue a career as a librarian in 1921, becoming the first Black woman to graduate from the New York Public Library's library school and would help with integration efforts within the branches. Her work in libraries would lead her to the literary circles of Harlem and in 1925 she would begin work on Quicksand, her semi-autobiographical debut novel. Published in 1928 to critical and financial success, Larsen would continue to make waves when just one year later, she published her sophomore novel, Passing. The success of her novels as well as her 1930 short story, "Sanctuary," led her to become the first African American woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, which she used to travel through Europe in the wake of her divorce in 1933. Little is known about Larsen's life after she returned to the U.S. in 1937, other than she had returned to nursing, disappeared from the literary world and may have suffered from intense depression. There was some speculation that like the characters in her books, Larsen had elected to pass into the white community given how difficult it was for single women of color to achieve financial independence, but to this day there is no evidence supporting or disproving the claim. While she died alone at the age of seventy-two, Larsen's work cemented her legacy as an important voice in the Harlem Renaissance–one that represented the struggles of identity and culture that befell mixed-raced people of the time.

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PASSING

Nella Larsen

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Copyright

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2022

Cover photograph © JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado/Getty

Life & Times section © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd Jordan Mulligan asserts his moral right as the author of the Life & Times section Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from Collins English Dictionary

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Source ISBN: 9780008554286

EBook Edition © September 2022 ISBN: 9780008554293

Version: 2022-09-15

History of William Collins

In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William co-published in 1825, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

Soon after, William published the first Collins novel; however, it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

Aged 30, William’s son, William II, took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly ‘Victorian’ in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and The Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time.

A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopedias and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases, and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of ‘books for the millions’ was developed, although the phrase wasn’t coined until 1907. Affordable editions of classical literature were published, and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel and adventure books. This series eclipsed all competition at the time, and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics, and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

Life and Times

Nella Larsen was born to a white woman and mixed-race African Caribbean man. This fact was often held up as the defining moment of Larsen’s life. But as she writes in Passing, ‘everything can’t be explained by some general biological phrase’. It is far more complicated than that.

Take the places her parents came from. Her mother, Marie, a poor seamstress and domestic worker, had emigrated from the island of Fyn in Denmark. While their status as a colonial power was on the wane, the Danes still held territories in the north of Europe and in the West Indies, including the islands of Saint Thomas, Saint John and Saint Croix. Nella’s father, Peter Weller, emigrated from one of these islands. It is believed that Peter was most likely a descendant of George or Henry Walker, two white American businessmen who had arrived in the Danish West Indies in the 1840s. Twenty years after Nella’s birth in Chicago in 1891, the Danish West Indies was sold to the United States thanks to its strategic position near the entrance of the Panama Canal. Nella Larsen was defined by the spaces in-between that she inhabited: between white and Black America, colonial Denmark and its colonies in the Caribbean, the disappearing power of the Great European Nation States, and the growing global power of the United States of America.

Even now, Larsen is an author defined by slipping between definitions, simultaneously thought of as a mysterious, lost figure of the Harlem Renaissance and as its greatest novelist.

Early Life

The area of Chicago that Nella Larsen was raised in was known as The Levee. Largely made up of recent economic migrants from the Midwest and northern Europe, the area was fiercely working class and densely populated. The streets were made up of block after block of wood-frame buildings, with narrow alleys threading between them leading to smaller-still apartments that had been thrown up in what were once back yards. Wooden sidewalks were put down to keep residents from sinking into the mud.

The Levee was also majority white. While a hub of immigration, the Great Migration of Black workers from the South, which began in 1916, was yet to take place. The year before Nella was born, Black people made up only 1.3 per cent of the total population of Chicago. Throughout her childhood Nella and her family were forced to move around the city in a bid to avoid the regular racist abuse aimed at their mixed-race family.

This lack of Black and mixed-race role models in Nella’s life only became starker when her father, Peter, left the family when she was only two years old. Marie claimed that Peter had died of a heart attack, and she soon remarried, taking up with another Danish migrant named Peter Larsen. Nella took her stepfather’s name, but struggled to find a spelling that felt comfortable: she tried out Nellye Larson and Nellie Larsen before settling on how we know her today. Her mother and stepfather quickly conceived a daughter and after that Nella was not only one of the few mixed-race faces in her neighbourhood, she was also the only mixed-race member of her family. They visited Denmark when they could, and Nella learned Danish games and songs. She rarely met with the family of her birth father.

Discovering the Harlem Renaissance

It was only when Larsen left Chicago and enrolled at the Fisk Normal School in Nashville, a teacher-training program linked to the historically Black Fisk University, that she began to have some experience of Black American culture. However, it would seem Larsen could not occupy this space comfortably. The vast majority of the other students were from the South, and were the descendants of slaves, meaning their life experience and the context for their own Blackness was radically different from what Nella had experienced up until this point.

This same discomfort appeared to play out when Larsen attended the Lincoln School for Nurses in the Bronx. The new campus had been founded to recruit Black women into the field, but this led to an unsettling power imbalance on the ward. Most patients were white, and almost all the doctors were white men, while the nurses assisting them were primarily Black women. By 1915 she graduated, and quickly left the institution, heading south once more to become a superintendent of nurses at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

A year later, Larsen was back in New York, still unable to find a position in her life in which she could feel entirely herself. However, it was then that she met Elmer Imes. Imes was the second African American in history to receive a PhD in physics, and a prominent member of a community of Black intellectuals and creatives that were coming to prominence in the city. The two married in 1919 and soon moved to Harlem, where they became friends with the likes of W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes and Grace Nail Johnson.

It was in this environment that Larsen was able to express her interest in literature and art, and create a version of herself she wished to share with the world. Harlem was becoming a Black cultural mecca, where radical new kinds of literature, music, performance and art were celebrating the African American past, present and future. Nella helped to prepare the New York Public Library’s first exhibition of African American artists, and later became the first Black female graduate from the library’s teaching programme. She also began experimenting with writing fiction, penning a number of pulpy genre stories under a pseudonym. Finally, with the encouragement of her friend Carl Van Vechten, a white photographer and critic with an interest in the work coming out of Harlem, Larsen penned her first novel: a modernist autobiographical novel, Quicksand.

Literary Success

Quicksand tells the story of a mixed-race young woman struggling to find a place where she feels comfortable in the world. Among Black people in the South, Harlemites and her white Danish family, the main character never feels as though she has found the full acceptance she craves.

Published by Knopf in 1928, the book was an immediate critical success – W. E. B. Du Bois called it the ‘best piece of fiction that Negro America has produced since the heyday of [Charles] Chesnutt’ – but it struggled to find a readership.

Her debut was quickly followed by the publication of Passing the next year. Passing follows two childhood friends, both mixed-race women, who have taken radically different approaches to how they move through the world. One identifies as Black and has married a Black doctor; the other ‘passes’ as white, and is married to a white man. On reuniting in adulthood, the two friends are confronted with the lives they could have lived and long for the other’s situation. This was African American modernism, drawing on the Black experience of modern Harlem rather than the structures and idioms that had emerged from the South after emancipation.

Again, the book received rave reviews but little commercial success. Still, it established Larsen as a respected figure in the literary scene. For Passing, Larsen was awarded the Harmon Foundation’s bronze medal for literature, and, on the basis of both her novels, she became the first Black American woman to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing.

Obscurity and Rediscovery

Unfortunately, the Guggenheim award marked the end of Nella’s rise as a prominent literary figure. The same year she received the award, Larsen was accused of plagiarism in one of her short stories, ‘Sanctuary’. Many believed Larsen had lifted the story wholesale from the work of Sheila Kaye-Smith, a British author with a large following in the United States. Larsen contested that the story had come to her almost as folklore, told to her by a patient in her time as a nurse. While the accusations of plagiarism remained unproven, the controversy rocked Larsen’s position in the literary community. Using the money she had received from the Guggenheim award, Larsen decided to leave the United States for Europe, and spent several years travelling between Mallorca and Paris. She attempted to write a third novel there, but with little success. She would never publish another novel.

When she returned to New York, Larsen’s marriage officially fell apart. For almost a decade the couple had struggled with accusations of Imes’ infidelity, and the growing tension between the two had been one of the motivations for Larsen’s years in Europe. Following the divorce, Larsen withdrew from the literary and intellectual circles that had been the couple’s natural home since the beginning of their relationship. She returned to nursing and, in effect, ended her public life.

Larsen died of a heart attack in 1964. She left behind very little beyond her manuscripts and her ground floor apartment. By this time, Passing and Quicksand had both gone out of print.

This grand figure of the Harlem Renaissance would have been almost entirely forgotten if not for the work of feminist, queer and literary scholars who rediscovered Larsen’s work in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1986, Rutger University Press reissued both of her novels and re-established them as groundbreaking, confrontational and unique works of interwar Modernism. Since then, her reputation has only grown, spawning countless reissues and reinterpretations, as well as a film adaptation of Passing for Netflix. Even now, Larsen occupies a space in between: a literary outsider in her lifetime, now heralded as one of America’s great writers.

Dedication

FOR

Carl Van Vechten

AND

Fania Marinoff

Epigraph

One three centuries removed

From the scenes his fathers loved,

Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,

What is Africa to me?

—Countée Cullen

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

History of William Collins

Life and Times

Dedication

Epigraph

PART 1   Encounter

PART 2   Re-Encounter

PART 3   Finale

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from the Collins English Dictionary

About the Publisher

PART 1

ENCOUNTER

CHAPTER 1

It was the last letter in Irene Redfield’s little pile of morning mail. After her other ordinary and clearly directed letters the long envelope of thin Italian paper with its almost illegible scrawl seemed out of place and alien. And there was, too, something mysterious and slightly furtive about it. A thin sly thing which bore no return address to betray the sender. Not that she hadn’t immediately known who its sender was. Some two years ago she had one very like it in outward appearance. Furtive, but yet in some peculiar, determined way a little flaunting. Purple ink. Foreign paper of extraordinary size.

It had been, Irene noted, postmarked in New York the day before. Her brows came together in a tiny frown. The frown, however, was more from perplexity than from annoyance; though there was in her thoughts an element of both. She was wholly unable to comprehend such an attitude towards danger as she was sure the letter’s contents would reveal; and she disliked the idea of opening and reading it.

This, she reflected, was of a piece with all that she knew of Clare Kendry. Stepping always on the edge of danger. Always aware, but not drawing back or turning aside. Certainly not because of any alarms or feeling of outrage on the part of others.

And for a swift moment Irene Redfield seemed to see a pale small girl sitting on a ragged blue sofa, sewing pieces of bright red cloth together, while her drunken father, a tall, powerfully built man, raged threateningly up and down the shabby room, bellowing curses and making spasmodic lunges at her which were not the less frightening because they were, for the most part, ineffectual. Sometimes he did manage to reach her. But only the fact that the child had edged herself and her poor sewing over to the farthermost corner of the sofa suggested that she was in any way perturbed by this menace to herself and her work.

Clare had known well enough that it was unsafe to take a portion of the dollar that was her weekly wage for the doing of many errands for the dressmaker who lived on the top floor of the building of which Bob Kendry was janitor. But that knowledge had not

Reviews for Passing

[carolfoisset · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This rather slim book packs a punch. Read The Vanishing Half awhile ago which made me think deeper about the act of "passing" and how that would play out through a persons life. Highly recommend both books

[scottjpearson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This short classic, set in New York City, was originally published in 1929 during the Harlem Renaissance. It examined the phenomenon of “passing” – a black person acting as a white person. Of course, the American context has changed significantly since 1929. The concept of race is now, thankfully, widely considered a social construct, without any biological merit. The concept of passing, though still present on occasion, is less of an issue.Nonetheless, Larsen gives us insight into how a culture obsessed with race, as early twentieth-century America was, can sometimes devolve into strange scenarios. In this particular scenario, Irene Redfield lives a comfortable life in Harlem with her physician-husband and children. Notably, she has light skin, but lives as an African American. She becomes reacquainted with a childhood friend Claire Bellew/Kendry. Claire, likewise, has light skin, but effectively “passes” as a white woman with a white husband. Even Claire’s husband does not know of her black lineage.By resuming a loose friendship with Irene, Claire realizes a spiritual longing for the black community in Harlem. Perhaps this is innate, due to her upbringing; perhaps this stems from living some kind of inauthentic existence. Nonetheless, Claire begins to spend time secretly with Irene whenever Claire’s husband is out of town on business. The husband, however, is openly racist and routinely uses the n-word. The obvious instability in this scenario ends up playing out in a shocking manner.In a post-George Floyd era, this book addresses timely issues such as how race affects how we interact in the world. Race in 1920s America is different than race in the 2020s, granted, but we aren’t so far as to be fully colorblind. To cite Cornel West, race still matters. Thus, contemporary readers should not treat this classic as a mere relic of the past.Should people be made to feel ashamed of their race? Is it all about how one presents one’s self? What role does authenticity have to play with the construct of race? This book’s style is easily accessible by many, even youth (though it does contain the n-word). At around 150 pages, it doesn’t take long to read either. In perusing it, perhaps we will find out that the world of the 1920s isn’t all that much different from today’s inequities.

[clamato_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am simply in awe of this writing talent. A short read, yet brimming with detail and nuance. Timeless and brilliant.

[kidzdoc_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Passing is largely set in Harlem, but it begins with a chance meeting between two childhood friends from Chicago, Irene Redfield, a light skinned African American woman who married to a Black physician and is living in upper class Harlem society, and Clare Kendry, who is also light skinned, but decided to pass for White, marry an overt racist, Jack Bellew, and remain in Chicago. Clare recognizes Irene after she escapes the summer heat by going to a rooftop restaurant in Chicago during a visit to the city, and they re-establish ties. The two are able to pass for White, and when Clare's husband joins them his vicious denigration of Blacks, and Clare's acceptance of his remarks, deeply offends Irene, who vows to have nothing further to do with Clare. Clare, however, is both manipulative and persistent, and since she wishes to surreptitiously see Irene again and re-enter Black society, she manages to convince Irene to invite her to social events in Harlem, which her husband Jack is unaware of.The relationship between the two women strengthens, despite Irene's disapproval of Clare's passing as White, but it ultimately puts a strain on Irene's marriage, and on Clare's, as her standing and financial stability is dependent on keeping her racist husband in the dark about her true heritage, as she spends ever more time in the company of her newfound Black friends.Passing, which was the inspiration for a critically acclaimed film produced and directed by Rebecca Hall in 2021 that is currently available for viewing on Netflix, was a revealing look into the lives of mixed race African Americans in the 1920s, both those who identified as Black and suffered from racial prejudice and lack of equal educational, job and housing opportunities, and those who crossed over the White world and enjoyed its benefits, as long as their true heritage remained a secret. The novel was undoubtedly more powerful and groundbreaking after its release in 1929 than it is currently, but it is still an important and relevant work, and a well written and compelling book.

[gpangel_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Passing by Nella Larson is a 1929 publication. This short novel really packs a punch and could put any current day psychological author to the test. Set in the Harlem Renaissance, the story is centered around two childhood friends, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendy. Both are light-skinned black women- but Irene lives in Harlem with her husband and two children, while Clare passes for white, enjoying the benefits of a society wife. Irene is proud of her heritage, while Clare felt ‘passing’ would provide with her a more comfortable life. When the two women meet again after many years of separation, the consequences of their decisions will alter their lives in ways they never could have imagined. This novel explores the themes of race and identity- subjects that are still quite relevant today. I thought this was a taut, tightly wound story in many ways. There is always an uneasy feeling humming just beneath the surface. The repercussions of living a lie, the constant fear of exposure, and the burden it places on others who are forced to keep secrets, on top of the building tensions in Irene’s marriage once Clare forcefully inserts herself into Irene’s life again, made for some disquieting and complex situations that had me holding my breath as the suspense builds to its shocking climax. With any short story the issue of character development can be a problem for me, but in this situation the dialogue and Irene’s inner thoughts are all that is required to create plenty of complexity. The conclusion, though deliberately ambiguous, was stunning nonetheless, and left me feeling a little numb for a while. The novel is very well-written, thought-provoking, suspenseful and tragic. I highly recommend this incredible, timeless classic! 4.5 stars

[et.carole · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

For Harlem Renaissance, but a good and earth-shattering read. Irene's mind was expressed flawlessly.

[bookczuk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

2022 pandemic read. Wow. The story of Nella Larsen, herself, is equally fascinating.

[etxgardener · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When light skinned Irene Redfield meets her childhood friend, Clare, by chane in Chicago, she discovers that her old friend has been passing for white and is married to a racist.Irene is shocked,, but puts the incident out of her mind when she returns home to Harlem and her prominent physician husband. But then Clare shows up in New York and Irene finds herself increasingly entangled in Clare’s deception until all of Clare’s lies have a tragic end.

[judygibson-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Eye opening, needed it.

[msf59 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“It’s funny about ‘passing.’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.” This slim, beautifully written novel is about two women living in New York City in the 1920s. They were childhood friends together. One, Irene Redfield, is a black woman living an affluent life with her husband and children. The second is Clare Kendry, also a black woman but “passing” as a white woman. To complicate matters, her white husband is a stone-cold racist. This book was written in 1929 but I had never heard of it until recently. I am glad it landed on my radar. A little gem, that speaks volumes.

[ogaines-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found the women to be silly and so wrapped up in themselves playing a dangerous game that it almost hurt to finish it.

[burritapal · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

2.5 stars
One of the strangest books I've read, it's about a woman, Clare, in 1920s New York, who as a light-skinned POC, passes as a huera. In fact, she's married to a racist white man who openly admits that he hates POC, yet he doesn't know he's married to a black woman.
It was apparently a thing, in the 1920s, for White people to go to Harlem and hang out with POC, in their clubs. I believe this is what later came to be known as "slumming."
But the characters in this story are all bourgeois, so neither color of characters are acting natural; it feels too much like they're all reading lines off a manuscript. Check out this unbelievable line from the character who is modeled after Carl Van Vechten, a white novelist of the time who wrote a book about POC with an offensive title. At a dance, he asks Irene, a bougie black who was a childhood friend of Clare's, who the beautiful blonde was:
" 'She's a girl I used to know a long time ago in Chicago. And she wanted especially to meet you.'
'S' awfully good of her, I'm sure. And now, alas! The usual thing's happened. All these others, these - er - "gentlemen of colour" have driven a mere Nordic from her mind.'
'Stuff!'
'S' a fact, and what happens to all the ladies of my Superior race who are lured up here. Look at Bianca. Have I laid eyes on her tonight except in spots, here and there, being twirled about by some Ethiopian? I have not.' " P.76

The author several times has her POC characters refer to themselves as "children of Ham." In the explanatory notes, it says: "Ham's dark children; (Genesis 10:6 - 20), in the Biblical Table of Nations, the descendants of Noah's son Ham are the Semitic - speaking people of Canaan, then belonging to Egypt, and the hamitic - speak speaking people of northern Africa, including Egypt, Ethiopia, and Nubia." P.121
And also:
" '...sons and Daughters of Ham': (Genesis 9:20 - 27), "literally, the Canaanites, the descendants of Ham, one of the three sons of Noah, saved from God's destruction of a wicked World by flooding. Ham was punished for mocking his father's drunkenness and nakedness. Ham's punishment for disrespecting his father fell upon his children who were cursed to become the slaves of his brothers' children; slaveholders in the United States applied this biblical account to Africans and used it as a justification for slavery." P.117

[librolindsay · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I don't know why, every time I read a book published decades before I was born, I continue to be astonished at how great and "readable" it is. Maybe it's lingering self-doubt from having to read and comprehend Shakespeare at a breakneck pace in high school. Whatever it is, it's a shame because it keeps me from experiencing books like Passing. This slight novel turned out to be much more than I anticipated. It had been a while since I had read a synopsis, and I am so thankful because the dark twist caught me off-guard. This is a haunting book and reads nearly like it was written today. I would have gladly swapped it for Shakespeare.

[francoisvigneault · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Quick, tightly written piece that reminded me of Katherine Mansfield, with a well-rendered mix of interior struggles, interpersonal cruelty, and a thoughtful exploration of the intricacies of racial identity in America. A breezy read that is never unengaging, though the ending wraps up in a sort of pat and typical fashion that is neither satisfying nor surprising. I'm am surprised that I never read this in high school or college (read a good share of Harlem Renaissance literature), I'm glad to see it is getting some well-deserved attention recently. I listened to the Tessa Thompson-read audiobook and her delivery was expert and nuanced.

[terriks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an amazing book, a novella written with such concise, perfect prose, it's a shame to have it over so quickly. I was immediately drawn into the story and its characters. I read this in a day and a half, torn between wanting to find out how it ends and wanting it to last. I'm going to be reading this again. Probably more than once. There's so much to unpack - about race, identify, choices - I feel the need for a discussion group, which rarely happens. But this amazing book deserves it. Nella Larsen writes powerfully, and is worth diving into deeply.

[kakadoo202 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting subject i never thought about. Good writing. Surprising ending.

[rosalita_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This classic of African-American literature is set in the 1920s and explores the practical and emotional ramifications when a pair of black women meet by chance after many years and one discovers that the other has been passing as white ever since she disappeared from the neighborhood where they grew up.For Irene, who narrates the story, her childhood friend Clare's choice to pretend to be white raises complicated feelings within her. On the one hand, she herself has been known to occasionally present as white in situations where she would not be welcome as a black woman — certain restaurants or businesses, for example. On the other hand, she is proud to be black, and having married a black doctor and living a comfortable life in the Harlem Renaissance community in New York City, spends much of her time working to raise money to help disadvantaged fellow black Americans. She can't help viewing Clare's passing as a repudiation of the pride 'Rene feels about being black.Despite Irene's disapproval of Clare's life (and the fact that Clare's husband is an unrepentant racist who has no idea his wife is not white) she can't help feeling a begrudging admiration and liking for Clare. There are hints that there may even be some sexual tension between them, although this 1929 book does not explore the topic beyond slight hints and suggestions that may be my 21st century brain imposing current cultural norms on the past.This is an exceedingly short book — really more of a novella than a novel — and that was a source of some frustration to me. It felt that we never got to the real heart of how and why Clare chose to live her life the way she did. That feeling was compounded by the ambiguous and somewhat abrupt-seeming ending, which I am still unsure of even now. None of that should deter a reader who is interested in exploring the realities of race in 1920s America, though. Short as it is, [Passing] packs a punch and is well worth spending time with, however brief.

[toric90 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5 stars but rounded up. The ending! Really the whole journey... but that ending!!! I read The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett right before this — they were an interesting pair together.

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This 1929 novel is about two Black women, one who is “passing” as a white woman. Though the book isn’t long, it packs a powerful punch. The drama is taut and it’s shockingly relevant. It touches on issues of class, gender, and obviously race. I’m sure this story must have inspired The Vanishing Half in some ways. There were a lot of similarities, but this was written almost a century before! A must read!

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was an audiobook listen of only about 4 hours but I kept having to repeat passages because a later reference made me think I hadn't understood. That's not necessarily a bad thing but it did mean it took me quite a while to finish this. The narrator was Robin Miles who did a good job.This book was published in 1929 and is one of only two books that Nella Larson wrote. Larson was of mixed racial heritage and she celebrated her Negro (as she referred to herself) status but it was apparently quite common for light-skinned African Americans to try to pass as white at that time. This book tells the story of two light-skinned women who took different paths once they had grown up. Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry had both grown up in the same neighbourhood in Chicago but lost track of each other when Clare's father died and she went to live with two white aunts. Clare passed as white and married a wealthy white man who did not know that Clare was partially black. Irene married a black man and went to live in Harlem with him where they mingled with both white and black people. On a visit back to Chicago Irene and Clare ran into each other. Clare and her husband mostly lived in Europe where she rarely met other Negroes. Clare invited Irene for tea at her hotel and while there Irene met Clare's husband, John Bellew. Bellew calls Clare Nig (short for the racial epithet for African Americans) because he says she is so dark but he really has no idea of her racial heritage. Irene is horrified by his racist views and vows to have no more to do with Clare. However, Clare contacts Irene when the couple come to stay in New York for a number of months. Her husband is often away on business trips and Clare has decided she wants to have more contact with Negroes. Soon Clare is a frequent visitor in Irene's house and it seems that Irene's husband and Clare may be having an affair. Irene hopes to just ignore this and wait until Clare and her husband move back to Europe but tragedy strikes before that can happen.As an examination of the pressures black people faced in the US this opened my eyes. I hadn't really considered how many light-skinned mixed race people there were but of course, it is well known that white slave owners often had sexual relationships with their black slaves and, over time, that would result in light skin for some. I also hadn't considered how some people would find it desirable to pass as white in order to work, marry, and go about in white society. Clare talks of how anxious she was when she was pregnant that her child would be dark coloured and her decision to only have the one child. That must have been very stressful. This is one of those books that make you wonder what you would have done in the same circumstances. I can't really say if I would reveal my mixed race or if I would try to pass as well.

[japaul22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novella was written in 1929 by Black author Nella Larsen, who was part of the Harlem Renaissance. It is a complex look at racial identity in the 1920s. The title refers to the idea of Black women "passing" in society as white women. First off, we need to realize that at this time in America, any amount of black heritage made you Black, or Negro, which was the common term at the time. The novella focuses on two women who both could pass for white. One is Irene, who identifies as Black, is married to a Black man, and part of her Black community. She does, however, "take advantage" of her appearance sometimes. In the opening scene, she is visiting her hometown Chicago on a hot summer day. She feels faint and a taxi driver, presumably white, rescues her and takes her to a restaurant to get a glass of tea. We can also presume that she would not be allowed in this restaurant if she wasn't "passing" for white. There she meets a childhood friend, Clare, who is passing as white as well. Clare, however, has married a white man without telling him of her heritage. Clare misses her Black community though, and pushes Irene to reintroduce her to this society with disastrous consequences. This brief novel is an interesting look at race in the 1920s. It was uncomfortable for me to read. Much has changed in the past 100 years, but obviously not enough. I've certainly never read a book that so honestly addressed this single issue. I would say that I enjoyed Larsen's [Quicksand] more than this, but this is an important book about race in the U.S. and I definitely recommend it. Original publication date: 1929Author’s nationality: AmericanOriginal language: EnglishLength: 94 pagesRating: 3.5 starsFormat/where I acquired the book: kindle Why I read this: 1001 books group read

[alanteder · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Intriguing Portraits in PassingReview of the Penguin Vitae hardcover edition (2017) of the 1929 original.Nella Larsen (1891-1964) was a Harlem Renaissance author who published only two novels, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929) before she completely disassociated from writing and spent the rest of her life working as a nurse. This superb new edition from Penguin Vitae includes a thorough 30 page introduction by Emily Bernard and 8 pages of excellent Explanatory Notes by Thaddeus M. Davis.Passing is somewhat of a cat and mouse intrigue between two light-skinned African American women. Clare Kendry is passing for white, even though she is married to a virulently racist White American. Irene Redfield, although she could have passed, has stuck by her African American heritage and community. Kendry now regrets what she has left behind and begins to insinuate herself back into Redfield's life after a chance re-meeting (they had known each other as children) with eventual tragic consequences.I read Passing as part of my subscription to the inaugural 2020 Shakespeare and Company Lost Treasures curated selection. 4 books of the expected 12 have been delivered as of March 2020.

[bookconcierge · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Irene Redfield is doing some shopping while on a trip to Chicago, when she stops for a brief rest and some tea at an elegant hotel’s restaurant. She notices a woman at a nearby table keeps staring at her and she’s immediately concerned. Could the woman have somehow discerned that Irene is not white, but a Negro? Larsen was part of the Harlem Renaissance and this book is a marvel of social commentary. In this slim volume Larsen explores issues of black/white identity, of the desire to get ahead and the societal obstacles to that path, of male/female relationships, and female-female rivalries. There is tension, fear, anger, joy, desire and hope. We get a wonderful glimpse of middle-class Black culture in 1920s Harlem. And that ending! My F2F book club had a stimulating discussion.A word of caution re the introduction: Definitely read the introduction, which will give you much insight into the book, the author’s background, and the critical thoughts of various experts. BUT … read the book FIRST, as the introduction will contain major spoilers for what happens in the novel.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the great things about reading from the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die List is that I have been introduced to many writers that I had not experienced before. Such is the case with Passing by Nella Larsen. This is the story of two American women in the 1920s with a similar background who chose very different ways to live.Both women are very light skinned black women and while Irene is a respected member of the Black community, married to a black doctor and allowing herself to “pass” for white only occasionally, Clare actually lives the life of a white woman, completely denying her black heritage and even hiding her race from her rich, white and bigoted husband. But Clare seemingly desires some contact with the black community and latches onto Irene in order to attend various black social functions. Irene has mixed feelings about Clare, she doesn’t approve of her life choices yet she does her best to protect her secret. Her feelings become even more challenged when she realizes that her husband and Clare are having an affair.I found Passing to be a very interesting story. Nella Larsen herself was of mixed heritage, her mother was Danish and her father a black American. Racial segregation laws were in force until the 1960s and some light-skinned blacks used “passing” in order to obtain equal opportunities and rights, social standing and acceptance. It is unfortunate that Nella Larsen only wrote one other book, but I will be reading that in the near future.

[lostinalibrary · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written in 1929 during the Harlem Renaissance, Passing by Nella Larsen tells the story of two biracial and light-skinned black women who can pass as white. One, Clare, has married a racist white man who is completely unaware of her past and her identity. Irene, the other, has married a black physician and has no real wish to pass. However when she is tired after a shopping trip, she stops for tea at a whites only tea room where the two women encounter each other. They had grown up in the same neighbourhood but haven’t seen each other since childhood until this meeting. The encounter will lead to unexpected and eventually tragic consequences for both women.Passing is a very short book that packs a huge wallop. It is an intriguing, surprisingly suspenseful, and very insightful book about racial identity and attitudes that still resonates today. There is also an exploration of the tensions that develop between women, between the sexes, and between classes. Irene acts as narrator albeit an untrustworthy one adding a layer of ambiguity to the story and this ambiguity is nowhere more evident than at the end, one that was completely unexpected at least by me. This is not an easy or even a comfortable read but it is an important one and I recommend it highly.Thanks to Edelweiss+ and Restless Books for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

[bibliofemmes · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The number of commas renders some of the sentences stilted, so the writing is a bit off-putting. The characters of Irene and Clare, two mixed-race women who pass for different reasons and once childhood acquaintances, meet as adults. One selfish and self-centered, heedless of the harm she causes, the other self-sacrificing and jealous and only too aware of "doing the right thing." An unreliable narrator and the question of passing drives the story, but the personalities of the two women, so different but the same creates the tension and the ambiguous end.

[melissalenhardt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've gotten to the point in my reading life where I can frequently predict what's going to happen in a book. Whether it's a result of reading so voraciously for so many years or from my knowledge of story structure, themes or being able to interpret subtext and recognize foreshadowing, I'm not sure. Of course, I'm not always right, but my batting average is pretty darn good. That's why books that surprise me in some what always end up as favorites. The ending of Passing surprised me, though it probably shouldn't have.

Larsen pulls off a neat trick by making the reader believe this book is about blacks passing as whites and the pull black culture retains over those who "pass." It is a thematic red herring. What this book is really about is one woman's determination to preserve her way of life, social standing and family. Irene is a wonderfully complex character who was alternately sympathetic and a little scary in her single-minded pursuit of her own will.

Great book. Recommended.

[encephalical · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Got totally caught up in the central conflict, was not expecting the resolution. The intro in the Penguin Classics edition was so bad, full of spoilers and academese, that I put it down for six years before restarting it.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great book, quick read. Passing is the story of two women who are black and grew up as childhood friends in Chicago. It was published in 1929 and is set in Harlem Renaissance period, a period covering from 1918 to 1930 and is a time period of black culture/art. It did not just occur in Harlem New York but that might be the largest setting. This is a story of race and choices. One girl chose to escape her culture and married a white man and did not tell him. The other girl, Irene, married within her race and it is her story as well. There is a third choice but that girl only has a small part in the book. She married white but he knew she was black. That is just one layer of this great book. Passing is not the first book to be written about Passing; not the first book to examine Passing, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man,The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, The Father of Désirée's Baby, The Garies and Their Friends but this book does offer a inventive approach and fresh ideas to the topic, showing how even though one married black and lived as black she was still creating her own fiction. The story is great with an interesting conclusion. I guess I didn't see that coming but when it was done, I also was not surprised. And the ending remains ambiguous, IMO. The characters are great. It is highly readable. Achievement: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006/2008/2010/2012 Edition), Guardian 1000 (State of the nation), 500 Great Books by Women (Choices), David Bowie's Top 100 (1929). The book is told from Irene's POV and some is her stream of conscious and some her interactions.

[toddsherman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nella Larsen’s use of color in “Passing” is apropos since it’s a story about different women who can racially pass as white and the attendant problems of identity within different social circles. It’s also the first time the two main characters have met in years. The idea of passing could also refer to marital infidelity or transitory relationships or, simply, the brief glimpse a person may get of themselves —that moment of stark lucidity before the mirror. There’s a lot going on here. But the author’s use of color is as beautiful, original and evocative as it is pervasive. “Brilliant red patches flamed in Irene Redfield’s warm olive cheeks.” “A waiter passed her, followed by a sweetly scented woman in a fluttering dress of green chiffon whose mingled pattern of narcissuses, jonquils, and hyacinths was a reminder of pleasantly chill spring days.”“Irene watched her spread out her napkin, saw the silver spoon in the white hand slit the dull gold of the melon.”“Entering, Irene found herself in a sitting room, large and high, at whose windows hung startling blue draperies which triumphantly dragged attention from the gloomy chocolate-colored furniture. And Clare was wearing a thin floating dress of the same shade of blue, which suited her and the rather difficult room to perfection.”“A pale rose color came into Clare’s ivory cheeks.”“Clare, exquisite, golden, fragrant, in a stately gown of shining black taffeta, whose long, full skirt lay in graceful folds about her slim golden feet; her glistening hair drawn smoothly back into a small twist at the nape of her neck; her eyes sparkling like dark jewels. Irene, with her new rose-colored chiffon frock ending at the knees, and her cropped curls, felt dowdy and commonplace.”“Clare fair and golden, like a sunlit day. Hazelton dark, with gleaming eyes, like a moonlit night.”“Irene couldn’t remember ever having seen her look better. She was wearing a superlatively simple cinnamon-brown frock which brought out all her vivid beauty, and a little golden bowl of a hat. Around her neck hung a string of amber beads that would easily have made six or eight like one Irene owned. Yes, she was stunning.”“The day was an exceptionally cold one, with a strong wind that had whipped a dusky red into Felise’s smooth golden cheeks and driven moisture into Irene’s soft brown eyes.”OK, so I know that’s a lot to drop in an FB post, but that’s the power color has in this book. It’s a cumulative power. And all that paint builds up like impasto and makes you aware of each individual line in the brush strokes. The pain, the jealousy, the struggles, the frustration, the awe, the heartbreak—it’s all in there. Layers upon layers of gorgeously tormented meetings in the passing between humans. From race to race, sex to sex, social class to class, we all leave our thick lines in the paint. Will it compliment or contrast our idea of our own existence when we see it—when we happen upon that glimpse in the passing?“Her whole body went taut. In that second she saw that she could bear anything, but only if no one knew that she had anything to bear. It hurt. It frightened her, but she could bear it.”Goddamnit, Nella Larsen. You wrote a book that will have a far greater effect on me than the title would otherwise suggest.