That middle world : race, performance, and the politics of passing /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Charles, Julia S., author.
Imprint:	Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2020] ©2020
Description:	1 online resource
Language:	English
Subject:	Passing (Identity) in literature. Race awareness -- United States. Racially mixed people -- Race identity -- United States. American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism. Race in literature. Racially mixed people in literature. American literature -- African American authors Passing (Identity) in literature Race awareness Race in literature Racially mixed people in literature Racially mixed people -- Race identity United States Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Format:	E-Resource Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/14140767

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	146965959X 9781469659596 9781469659565 1469659565 9781469659572 1469659573
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:	"During the decades leading up to the Civil War, the idea of white superiority was bolstered by rigid race laws that governed interactions between the races, targeting Black people and relegating them to the lower rungs of the racial caste system. Consequently, American literature-especially that by black writers-began to reflect the cultural phenomenon of racial passing from the antebellum period through the collapse of Reconstruction. In this book, Julia Charles investigates the construction and performance of racial identity in select works of passing literature by Black writers. Charles looks at how Black writers in the nineteenth century have used the trope of racial passing in order to propose new racial categories and, relatedly, new boundaries of identity-essentially, creating a middle world between whiteness and blackness. For mixed-race characters in the Black passing novel Charles argues, race is about resisting and rejecting legally and socially imposed boundaries of identity, and African American authors of racial passing literature developed mixed-race characters that vacillated between multiple worlds as they negotiate these fuzzy and changing margins of identity"--
Other form:	Original 9781469659565 1469659565 9781469659572 1469659573

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