Passing Paperback – March 17, 2011

Author, Nurse, and Librarian, Nella Larsen was part of the Harlem Renaissance. Her mother was a white Danish Immigrant, her father, a mixed-race Afro-Caribbean immigrant from the Danish West Indies. She said he died when she was very young. Her mother married again, to a white Danish immigrant, and they had a daughter, Nella’s sister, Anna Elizabeth. Larsen was Nella’s stepfather’s name. Nella encountered discrimination in the white communities but was also somewhat excluded from African American communities because her background and life experiences were different. Her struggles to find a place to belong transferred over into her writing and added an extraordinary power to it that is picked up by all of us readers who feel of have felt lost and out of place in the world. In this way, she transcends mastering the craft of writing and takes it to the exceptional and magical level of art.This was written in the 1920s so some of the word choices and sentence structure choices are more formal and not quite as clear to some modern readers. However, that is one of the many things about the book that I liked.In the book, the main character, Irene, is married to a prominent doctor in Harlem. Nella was also married to a prominent doctor in Harlem.Even though the plot is about passing and that's something that is not dealt with today, this book is about so much more which is fully relevant today. The protagonist and antagonist are African-American women who have a very different outlook on their race. Irene feels loyalty and pride to her race and Clare has loyalty and pride only to what she wants out of life. Nothing else matters to her at all. This is the source of conflict.Clare, the antagonist, is not a likable person but she is one you are drawn to, the train wreck kind. You want to watch her just to see what will happen to her. On the other hand, most women regardless of their race, will not only like Irene, but will be able to easily step into her shoes.It’s a novella and to the author's credit, that’s all it needs to be due to her expert mastering of the craft of writing.And the ending …is absolutely superb.A must read.

The complexity of that statement in context, mixed with what we see of Irene before and after this exchange, displays Larsen's understanding of her subject matter.TL;DR: If you're coming for adventure and storytime, then you probably will not like it. If you want a story that asks the reader to empathize and think around the notion of passing, then you might find this interesting, if not fantastically presented.Passing is not a character study, and while technically a story, the plot and, arguably, Clare are only macguffins for Larsen, through Irene, to present and explore complicated natures of race, loyalty, and "this hazardous issue of 'passing'." These are the plot - how these ideas change and reshape (or not). This (to me) is where readers should focus, and less the surface story (and it's abrupt finale).Many people "pass" in the U.S. And I assume other nation and cultures.  But stories for Western audiences that, even tangentially, touch on this topic are based outside of reality. Larsen presents this using real people without any supernatural devices, which is noteworthy, and that she does so in an honest way is highly commendable and important.And Larsen does handle the topic brilliantly. Irene states at the initial moment of the book's climax, "You’ve just passed the only person that I’ve ever met disguised as a white woman." It is an engagingly ridiculous statement. Outside of the story, this brilliant line demonstrates Larsen's largely successful attempt at conveying the realities, hypocrisy, inner turmoil, and… ease… related to "passing," for those who can and want (however temporary or permanent). So, if you are up for a story that makes you think on a mildly taboo topic, this book is worth your time. If that's not your thing, it's not your thing. You do you, whatever that means to you. Pass or not pass, the choice is always yours and yours alone.

The title of this book refers to a group of light-skinned African-American women who can "pass" for white during Jim Crow. I give this book five stars, with one reservation. I found the book fascinating, with some amazing writing, and a riveting plot line that you are dropped into without the slightest suspicion, and blindsided by the depth of the psychological drama that unfolds. My criticism is that the book ends too quickly, and too abruptly. I would have read three times as much about this astounding world, and all of the multiple characters, black and white, that are brought to life so vividly, along with the glamor of the Harlem Renaissance. It should have been a much longer book. This writer got a Guggenheim and then couldn't get her subsequent book published. I heard about this book because it was the subject of a discussion at the Waterstones bookstore in London, and since it was an American writer, it made me curious. I suspect the author's life, as a black woman in those days, led her into the kind of poverty and obscurity that Zora Neale Hurston ended up living, as a hotel maid, at the time of her death. We lost out on the kind of body of work they might have produced had they been of a race, class and gender that offered more support for their literary gifts.

I read this with a book club and we were all in awe of the quality of the writing.

I loved the book, and the edition is good.Honestly it can be read really fast. It's worth it.

Un affresco psicologico di straordinaria fattura, per una perla della letteratura degli anni '20 ingiustamente poco nota al grande pubblico. Breve, ma intenso. Da scoprire e riscoprire.

Il n’y a même pas de numérotation de page, les lignes ne sont pas justifiées. bref, c’est comme si quelqu’un l’a imprimé très rapidement, sans un minimum de respect de ce que c’est un < livre >.

Don't buy from this publishing house . Lots of errors in punctuation. Difficult to read