{"id":58144,"date":"2019-05-22T17:53:31","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T17:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58144"},"modified":"2019-05-22T17:53:31","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T17:53:31","slug":"youre-neither-one-thing-nor-the-other-nella-larsen-philip-roth-and-the-passing-trope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58144","title":{"rendered":"\u201cYou\u2019re Neither One Thing (N)or The Other\u201d: Nella Larsen, Philip Roth, and The Passing Trope"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou\u2019re Neither One Thing (N)or The Other\u201d: Nella Larsen, Philip Roth, and The Passing Trope<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Philip Roth Studies<\/a>
\nVolume 8, Number 1, Spring 2012<\/a>
\npages 45-61<\/p>\n

Donavan L. Ramon<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies
\nKentucky State University<\/em><\/p>\n

Philip Roth<\/a> has historically been situated in a male literary tradition, with critics assessing him alongside Saul Bellow<\/a>, Bernard Malamud<\/a>, and more recently, Charles Chesnutt<\/a> and Ralph Ellison<\/a>. Because of his problematic portrayals of women characters, Roth is not often discussed alongside women writers. My paper goes beyond this by situating Roth alongside a black woman writer, Nella Larsen<\/a>. In fact, Larsen\u2019s Passing<\/em><\/a> (1929) and Roth\u2019s The Human Stain<\/em><\/a> (2000) share several thematic and structural similarities, such as the tropes<\/a> of belated race learning, double consciousness<\/a>, anonymous letter writing, taboo sexualities, and ambiguous deaths. My essay argues that these tropes underlie passing<\/a> narratives and reveal the development of twentieth century passing texts.<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because of his problematic portrayals of women characters, Roth is not often discussed alongside women writers. My paper goes beyond this by situating Roth alongside a black woman writer, Nella Larsen. In fact, Larsen\u2019s Passing (1929) and Roth\u2019s The Human Stain (2000) share several thematic and structural similarities, such as the tropes of belated race learning, double consciousness, anonymous letter writing, taboo sexualities, and ambiguous deaths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,6462,20],"tags":[16035,16036,87,8110,11553],"class_list":["post-58144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-donavan-l-ramon","tag-donavan-ramon","tag-nella-larsen","tag-philip-roth","tag-philip-roth-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58145,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58144\/revisions\/58145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}