Racial Etiquette and the (White) Plot of Passing
(Re)Inscribing "Place" in John Stahl's Imitation of Life
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8894828 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Adrienne Johnson Gosselin (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1998 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 47-68 |
| Publication date | 1998-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Review of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-7720 • E-ISSN: 1710-114X |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.3138/cras-028-03-04 |
| OpenAlex | W2085409162 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 11 |
The idea of "passing for white" is a uniquely American notion. It is a social more than a biological phenomenon, the one-drop rule, artificial constructs of race and miscegenation, and America's "unique definition of what makes a person black" (Davis 1990,14).1 The narrative of passing-for-white is em- bodied in the trope of the tragic mulatto, a figure characterized by betrayal and race-denial, haunted by racial impurity, and whose very body bears the stigma of relations unsanctionable in the United States. While the narrative of passing-for-white has been popular with both black and white American authors, it would be a mistake to assume their treatment to be the same. For example, in Our Nig ([1859] 1983), the author Harriet Wilson utilized the passing plot to frame a narrative "not about virtue in distress because of mixed blood and male oppression but about the hypocrisy of New England Christians" (Bell 1987, 50). Moreover, Our Nig is the first to introduce an interracial marriage into American fiction with a white wife and black hus- band, as well as the first to treat its mulatto protagonist "as an individual rather than a type" (Bell 1987, 50)
Art · Betrayal · Literature · Narrative · Plot (graphics · Psychoanalysis · White (mutation · American and British Literature Analysis · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Social Psychology
The Afro-American novel and its tradition
Who is black?
New people
Reconstructing Womanhood
Race, Gender, and the Politics of Reading
The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man
The Changing Same
Reading the Intersection of Race and Gender in Narratives of Passing
Optic White
Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North. Showing that Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There
"Race and Romance in "Bird of Paradise
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,17 |
| Citation span | 2008 - 2025 (18) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |