Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.
To be sure, there are other dimensions of this adaptation that deserve discussion—for example, the downplaying of Clare’s abusive childhood, which renders her passing a little more mercenary than it is in the novel—but I’ve already gone on too long. As is by now clear, I have my misgivings about [Rebecca] Hall’s recent film, but, above all, I’m very glad that she made it. If nothing else, it is a sign of [Nella] Larsen’s growing stature, a growth evident to any scholar who has been watching the ballooning scholarly interest in her work in the last decade. Having her novel adapted for the big screen constitutes a new stage in this evolution, for it makes her only the second novelist of the Harlem Renaissance to have her work adapted for film in a major way (Zora Neale Hurston was first, with Darnell Martin’s 2005 adaptation of Their Eyes Were Watching God).
Times change, and with them the ways in which some of us move through once-familiar spaces. Lately, I’ve been challenged with how to respond to the new dynamic of Mixed-Black folks being gatekept out of some Black spaces…
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022 at 15:59Z and is filed under Articles, Media Archive.
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