Near Black: White-to-Black Passing in American Culture (review) MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. Volume 35, Number 1 (Spring 2010) E-ISSN: 1946-3170 Print ISSN: 0163-755X DOI: 10.1353/mel.0.0078 David Todd Lawrence, Associate Professor of English University of St. Thomas Passing narratives have long been a fixture of American literature. For African American authors, plots of racial…