Passing Interest: Racial Passing in US Novels, Memoirs, Television, and Film, 1990-2010 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781438452272)

The first volume to focus on the trope of racial passing in novels, memoirs, television, and films published or produced between 1990 and 2010, Passing Interest takes the scholarly conversation on passing into the twenty-first century. With contributors working in the fields of African American studies, American studies, cultural studies, film studies, literature, and media studies, this book offers a rich, interdisciplinary survey of critical approaches to a broad range of contemporary passing texts. Contributors frame recent passing texts with a wide array of cultural discourses, including immigration law, the Post-Soul Aesthetic, contemporary political satire, affirmative action, the paradoxes of "colorblindness," and the rhetoric of "post-racialism." Many explore whether "one drop" of blood still governs our sense of racial identity, or to what extent contemporary American culture allows for the racially indeterminate individual. Some essays open the scholarly conversation to focus on "ethnic" passers--individuals who complicate the traditional black-white binary--while others explore the slippage between traditional racial passing and related forms of racial performance, including blackface minstrelsy and racial masquerade.

Author: Julie Cary Nerad
ISBN-10: 1438452276
ISBN-13: 9781438452272
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Language: English
Published: 07/01/2014
Pages: 348
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.51lbs
Size: 9.33h x 6.12w x 0.92d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2015 pg. 1300