The past decade has seen a tremendous growth in scholarly inquiry around the subject of racial passing. The context of the current historical moment coupled with viral discussions of cultural appropriation and “blackfishing” brings a sense of urgency to understanding the long history of passing and its function in the U.S. context. Julia S. Charles’s That Middle World: Race, Performance, and the Politics of Passing offers a perspective on this phenomenon that places performance at the heart of the racial passing experience. Charles calls for a rejection of previous scholarly treatments of passing that foreground experiences of loss among those who pass and instead argues for a focus on the opportunities that performing race offered to certain mixed-race African American citizens. Charles presents a book of theory and philosophy on racial passing meant to inform the ways scholars of African American literature and media studies can make sense of mixed-race and passing characters throughout nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature.
Tyler Sperrazza, “That Middle World: Race, Performance, and the Politics of Passing by Julia S. Charles (review),” Journal of Southern History, Volume 88, Number 1, February 2022, 164. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/soh.2022.0019.
Tags: Journal of Southern History, Julia S. Charles, Tyler Sperrazza