Book Review: Passing is educational, challenging, and contains far more substance than one might expect from such a short novel. The story is told like a three act play through two women, childhood friends. Clare who "passes," while married to a virulent racist (who demonstrates the absurdity of the "one drop rule"), and Irene who passes occasionally, but actually simply ventures at times into the white community and is light enough to be unchallenged. For Clare, life is hinged between black and white: her entire life is a reaction to the white world, which she has joined because she "looks white." She has abandoned her black heritage and seems to have lost her moral center. For Irene, the white world rarely intrudes as she lives comfortably within the black middle class, and "acts white." While proud of her heritage and working for racial advancement, she's also assimilated to the limits of rejection. Her life is not a matter of reacting to the white world, but living side by side, while trying to protect her children from the "race question" and stay safe. She's loyal to her race (and gender) and reluctantly protects Clare's secret because she's a black woman. But what happens if Irene's secure world is threatened when Clare wants to pass and reclaim her place in the culture. Although published in 1929, Passing still has much to say to us today. Apparently there is some controversy whether the novel ends with the paragraph beginning "Her quaking knees ..." or the following paragraph, "Centuries after... ." Both versions I found ended with the latter. It's said "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice," but in Passing, no one gets what they want. The stunning ambiguity of the ending is an excellent place to start a conversation. [4★]
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