Passing

I picked this up to celebrate Black History Month in my own way. I really enjoyed the writing, it was very beautiful to me. It was a short book and I really liked that it flowed quickly and still made me feel a lot of things.

Remarkable. Emotionally powerful on many levels. Larsen writes with a bold directness that I found both refreshing and uncomfortable. Narration is third person but entirely from the POV of one character, Irene, almost as if it were first-person disassociated: the reader has constant awareness of her emotional state but only indirect awareness, via her inferences, of the minds of others. Unusual but effective. Even more unusual, there's only one sympathetic character in the book and it's not Irene: it's her husband, who we realize she does not know at all, and her imaginings of who he is are a tragedy of their own. This is a complex, layered book.

Larsen must've been a fascinating person. Insightful, sensitive, witty. The main themes for me were choices, consequences, loss, loneliness, and the crushing of our hopes as we commit to paths in life. There is more than one character living a lie, and we see a lot of the costs involved. Larsen adds in religious intolerance, sex ed, responsible parenting, with enlightened positions on each. Absolutely delightful to find in a 1929 book. (Depressing, too, since the problems she rails against persist today).

4.5 stars, rounding down because the language was often more tell than show. But, no, rounding up because this was just too impressive.

I found this book because I'm participating in the 52 Book Challenge. I was looking for a book to satisfy the prompt: Takes Place During the Roaring Twenties. This one afforded me the added opportunity to discover a new to me author of color. This book was riveting. Written in the late 1920s, published in 1929- It feels positively timeless. I have never read a book about women passing- fair skinned “colored” women as they're called here- passing as white in society.
It was short but thoroughly fleshed out. Toward the end I was physically stressed out, reading quickly to figure out who was going to end up happy and who was going to end up exposed. This was a great, original story. Loved it. And loved discovering Nella Larsen- a trailblazer of the Harlem Renaissance.

Une histoire extrêmement prenante entre deux femmes prises dans le racisme de l'Amérique des années 20. J'ai eu du mal à comprendre tout le cheminement de pensée de la narratrice, mais j'ai littéralement dévoré les pages. La fin est profondément marquante, posant énormément de questions et laissant le lecteur dans l'interrogation.

A truly thought-provoking, suspenseful, and riveting classic novella. This still hits hard in 2022, post-The Vanishing Half, and I was impressed by how much Larsen did with such a succinct and readable text. Beautiful.

An elegantly written psychological portrait of two light-skinned black women who pass for white in New York's upper middle class in the 1920s. The novella is full of tension, and keeps building and building like a psychological thriller, with a focus on moments and conversations that reminds of a stage play. I really like the ambiguity of the ending.

The audiobook narration was excellent.

So well written. Makes me question a lot of things

3.5

(This took me much longer to read than it should have, through no fault of the books.) This was a really good glimpse into the ways black people passed as white in the 1920s. We meet three women at various points who either pass or don't, some of whom are married to white men, with all that may entail. This was really good and I did not see that ending coming.

What just happened here? This story kicks off with an amazing beginning and then fizzles into nothingness. Clare and Irene are both well-to-do African-American ladies. They lived in the same building years ago when they were children and have not seen each other since – until they run into each other some years later. Clare has passed for white, leaving all of her roots behind; she is married to a white man (who has no idea that she is black) and has a young daughter that passes for white as well. Irene, on the other hand, can pass for white, but has chosen not to. Her husband is African-American, and one of her sons has his dad's complexion. 

Irene wants to leave the past in the past and not reacquaint herself with Clare, but Clare always gets what she wants and forces her way into Irene's life. She insists that Irene visit her at a small party she is hosting. A series of conversations take place during the party that make Irene uncomfortable, and yet she continues to allow Clare into her life. Clare reveals she wants to go back – she wants to live among her own once again. I'm thinking to myself this is going to get good. How will her family and old acquaintances receive her? How will this impact her place in life? What will happen if she runs into her white friends/relatives again? etc. None of this is revealed as the plot changes into a love triangle. Clare is moving in on Irene's husband, and Irene is jealous. The story ends with a bit of a twist, but leaves so many questions unanswered.