Deconstructing the Mixed-Race Experience of PassingPosted in Dissertations, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2013-10-09 02:41Z by Steven |
Deconstructing the Mixed-Race Experience of Passing
California State University, San Marcos
May 2006
172 pages
Victoria Baldo Segall
A Thesis Submitted for Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Literature and Writing Studies
In “Beauty and the Beast: On Racial Ambiguity” Carla Bradshaw describes passing as an attempt to achieve acceptability by claiming membership in some desired group while denying other racial elements in oneself thought to be undesirable (79). In literature on passing, the mixed-race individual may, as Bradshaw suggests, become a “chameleon” if s/he desires; s/he may choose to pass as one race over another and blend with one race for reasons such as self-preservation. Bradshaw’s description of passing as gaining “false access” to a particular group or identity aides in setting thetone for passing as a harmful experience for the mixed-race individual. Specifically, this thesis will show that, as we’ll see with Nella Larsen’s “Passing,” Danzy Senna’s Caucasia, and Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, not only does passing present the instability of race, but it emotionally and physically destroys the mixed-race individual; the characters have the power and ability to perform and live within different racial worlds, but through their passing they ultimately disempower the non-dominant race of which they are a part and empower the dominant race.
To support this argument, Chapters One through Three will explore how, imbedded within all three texts, there are four themes in particular that play influential roles in the discussion of mixed-race identity and its relation to passing:
- fixed identity vs. unfixed identity
- performance of identity
- displacement
- racial consciousness
Table of Contents
- I. Introduction
- II. Chapter One: The Fall of Nella Larsen’s “Passing”
- III. Chapter Two: The Supposed Super Hybrid Birdie of Danzy Senna’s Caucasia
- IV. Chapter Three: The Problem with Hybrid Vigor in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia
- V. Conclusion
Read the entire thesis here.