Racial Passing in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Philip Roth’s The Human Stain

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Passing on 2013-10-13 02:34Z by Steven

Racial Passing in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Philip Roth’s The Human Stain

A Vertentes
Universidade Federal de São João del Rei
Volume 19, Number 2
13 pages

Maria Luiza Cardoso de Aguiar
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

The so-called racial passing is defined, mainly, as a phenomenon through which black people who are light-skinned pass for whites, in order to achieve social and economic advantages which are usually more easily available to white people. Based on problematizations around the concepts of passing, the present article intends to analyze, comparatively, two important works from the 20th century: The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man (1912/1989), written by James Weldon Johnson, and The Human Stain (2000), written by Philip Roth. The analysis of these works aims at investigating how the issue of passing is portrayed in each of the novels, in order to highlight the fact that, although the protagonists at stake share many similarities, such as the desire to free themselves from the decisiveness of pre-established categories like race, the experience of passing is heterogeneous and it is differently constructed and operated in each of the novels.

O chamado passing racial trata, principalmente, do fenômeno no qual negros de pele mais clara e de traços mestiços se passam por pessoas brancas, a fim de, mais comumente, conseguirem vantagens sociais e econômicas, frequentemente mais acessíveis aos brancos do que aos negros. A partir de problematizações em torno dos conceitos de passing, o presente trabalho visa a analisar comparativamente duas importantes obras da literatura norte-americana do século XX: The autobiography of an ex-colored man (1912/1989), de James Weldon Johnson, e The human stain (2000), de Philip Roth. Pretende-se investigar como a questão do passing é retratada em cada uma das obras, a fim de se destacar que, apesar de os protagonistas em questão apresentarem muitas similaridades e desejarem que categorias pré-estabelecidas não sejam decisivas em suas trajetórias, a experiência do passing é heterogênea, sendo construída e operada diferentemente em cada um dos romances.

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