The Theme of “Passing” in the Novels of James Weldon Johnson and Nella Larsen

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2014-05-05 17:57Z by Steven

The Theme of “Passing” in the Novels of James Weldon Johnson and Nella Larsen

International Journal of Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies (IJIMS)
Volume 1, Number 4 (2014)
pages 53-58
ISSN: 2348-0343

Dinesh Babu. P.
Department of English
Ramanujan College (University of Delhi), Kalkaji, New Delhi, India

The depiction of the experience of a very fair-skinned person of some “coloured” background who successfully passes into white society was a recurrent theme in early African American writings. In this paper an attempt is made to look at, and compare and contrast, two African American novels, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912) and Passing (1929) which deal with the theme of passing, written by James Weldon Johnson and Nella Larsen, a Black man and a Black woman writer. This paper analyses how the two novels reject the rules of colour division, rules which demand that one accepts a position within a predetermined hierarchy.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , ,