posted on 17 Jul 2020

Passing by Nella Larsen

Like so many long neglected Black authors of the Harlem Renaissance of the late 1920s, Nella Larsen’s work has found a new audience in the late 20th and 21st centuries. Even so, her work has been very difficult to find and that rarity means it’s also been excruciatingly expensive. So it is a matter of celebration when thoughtfully produced reprints become available and this Penguin hardback of Passing is a bit of a design gem. It’s an edition that also comes with an introduction and some suggested further reading by Emily Bernard and there are also explanatory notes from Thadious M. Davis – even with these additions it’s a book that runs to only 120 pages.

It has to be said that part of the reason for the neglect of Larsen’s work in the post-war years may well have something to do with her quite remarkable biography. In the words of Bonnie Wertheim writing for the New York Times:

“When Nella Larsen died, in 1964, she left little behind: a ground-floor apartment, two published novels, some short stories, a few letters. She was childless, divorced and estranged from her half sister, who, in some accounts, upon learning she was to inherit $35,000 of Larsen’s savings, denied knowing the writer existed.

It was a fitting end for a woman whose entire life had been a story of swift erasure.”

Larsen came from a mixed heritage background and her family lived in a predominantly white neighbourhood – they ‘passed’ as white – at a time when segregation on the basis of ethnic identity was a rigid social code. She moved to New York in 1919, married and started to involve herself with the cultural outcropping of talent that centred on Black Harlem. Two novels – Quicksand and Passing – made her briefly the centre of attention but in 1930 her short stories attracted claims of plagiarism and with a failing marriage to deal with as well, Larsen cut her ties with the circle of artists and writers she moved amongst and slipped into anonymity as a nurse until she died at the age of 72 in 1964.

Her novel, Passing, picks up the theme of women with mixed or Black heritage living the duplicitous lives of those ‘passing’ as white. Wertheim captures what is a very slender plot line:

' “Passing,” which tells the story of Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, two mixed-race women who grew up together and reunite at a Chicago hotel after years of separation. Clare, Irene discovers, has been living as a white woman married to a racist who is none the wiser about his wife’s background. The relationship between the two women flirts with the sensual as each becomes obsessed with the other’s chosen path.'

But, in truth, the plot line, which has something of an ambiguously tragic conclusion, isn’t the real fascination of this book. The story is told through the eyes of Irene Redfield struggles with her conflicted feelings for Clare – she is distressed by her passing, jealous of her beauty, bemused by her marriage to an aggressive racist and sexually attracted to her erstwhile friend.

It is the moral and ethical dilemmas forced upon Irene that fascinate. How much can Clare be blamed for her passing as white in a society in which being acknowledged as black brings with it so much injustice?

Without giving away the way the story concludes, we are forced to ask where the moral centre lies – with Irene or with Clare; and why have we created a society that can make these women behave in the way they do?

In truth I don’t think this is an overly profound book and nor is it a lost masterpiece but it is an important piece in a bigger picture for those wanting to understand the forces that would push to the surface and inform the civil rights movement – the outcome of which Larsen would not live to see.

You should be able to order this delightfully produced reprint hardback from your independent bookshop for less than £20.

 

Terry Potter

July 2020