Reading Order
Passing Reading Order
Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen is a novella of the Harlem Renaissance — at only 140 pages, one of the most compressed and psychologically intense works in American fiction, following Irene Redfield, a Black woman living in Harlem who encounters Clare Kendry, a childhood friend who has been 'passing' as white, married to a white man who doesn't know she is Black, and who has crossed the color line into a life of white upper-class comfort and danger. The story that follows — Clare's increasing entanglement with Irene's Harlem life, Irene's ambivalent attraction to Clare, and the explosive final scene — is Larsen's anatomy of what race, class, and desire mean in 1920s America. Larsen's novella is deceptively simple in its surface — the prose is smooth, almost cool — but the psychological layers are intricate. Irene is an unreliable narrator: she tells us that her anxiety about Clare is primarily about safety (Clare's white husband discovering that his wife and her Harlem friends are Black, causing a scandal), but the reader comes to understand that Irene's feelings about Clare are more complex — that she is attracted to Clare, jealous of Clare, threatened by Clare's freedom, and complicit in what happens to her. The question of the final scene (did Irene push Clare out the window, or did Clare fall?) is the novella's central mystery, and Larsen deliberately refuses to resolve it.
Where to start
Passing — any Penguin Classics or Dover Thrift edition. Read it in one sitting if possible; the novella's psychological intensity is best experienced without interruption.
Complete Passing Book List
- 1Buy
Passing
Nella Larsen·1929·The novella — Irene's encounter with Clare in 1920s New York; racial passing, female desire, and the color line at its most compressed and psychologically charged. - 2Buy
Quicksand
Nella Larsen·1928·Larsen's preceding novel — Helga Crane's restlessness across multiple racial and cultural communities; the companion in Larsen's inquiry into Black female identity under American racism. - 3Buy
The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison·1970·Morrison's debut — internalized racism in a Black girl's self-image; the successor in African-American women's fiction's account of Black female identity under the pressure of white cultural norms. - 4Buy
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston·1937·Hurston's Harlem Renaissance novel — Janie's self-discovery in Florida; the formal Harlem Renaissance companion, affirmative where Larsen is ambivalent, the tradition Larsen belongs to. - 5Buy
Sula
Toni Morrison·1973·Morrison's compressed masterpiece — Nel and Sula in Ohio; the successor in intense female friendship as primary literary subject, the ambivalence of women's attachment in a successor generation. - 6Buy
Plum Bun
Jessie Redmon Fauset·1929·Fauset's Harlem Renaissance novel — also about passing, published the same year as Larsen's novella; the formal companion in the passing novel genre, more conventional but equally important in its period. - 7Buy
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison·1952·Ellison's Black American classic — racial identity and the color line in mid-century America; the male counterpart to Passing's female account of racial identity performance. - 8Buy
The Human Stain
Philip Roth·2000·Roth's late novel — a Jewish man passing as Black who is accused of racism; the late 20th-century companion in the passing tradition, updating Larsen's concerns for the post-civil-rights era.
Passing — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Passing about?
Passing is set in New York in the 1920s and follows Irene Redfield, a light-skinned Black woman who lives in Harlem with her doctor husband Brian and their two sons. While shopping in a rooftop restaurant (passing as white herself, or at least not correcting the assumption), Irene encounters Clare Kendry, a childhood friend who has been living as white for years, married to John Bellew, a white man who not only doesn't know Clare is Black but who expresses virulent racism in Irene's presence. Clare has a daughter she has never told her husband about, and she yearns to reconnect with Harlem and the Black community she left. Over the following months, Clare involves herself more and more in Irene's life — attending Harlem parties, dancing with Irene's husband — until the final scene at a Harlem party, when John Bellew discovers his wife is Black, and Clare falls from the window to her death.
Did Irene push Clare out the window?
Larsen deliberately refuses to tell the reader. The final scene is narrated from Irene's perspective, and it is a model of strategic ambiguity: Irene feels Clare sway, sees Clare fall, is asked questions by the police, and then faints. We are never told whether Irene pushed Clare, moved toward Clare in some ambiguous way, or simply witnessed Clare's fall (whether accidental or deliberate). The ambiguity is the point: Irene's narrative throughout the novella has been unreliable in ways that suggest she is concealing her own desires and motivations from herself as much as from the reader, and the final scene's ambiguity is the culmination of that unreliability. Different readers have reached different conclusions, and the critical literature is divided — which is exactly what Larsen intended.
What is the significance of racial passing in the 1920s?
Racial passing — a light-skinned Black person living as white — was a social reality of considerable significance in the early 20th century United States, when racial segregation imposed enormous material disadvantages on Black people. Light-skinned Black people could, by passing, access white schools, white neighborhoods, white jobs, and white social networks that were otherwise closed to them. Passing required absolute secrecy, the severing of ties to family and community, and the constant anxiety of discovery. Larsen was herself light-skinned and had complex relationships with both Black and white communities; her novellas (Passing and Quicksand) are explorations of the psychological cost of existing at the racial boundary. By the time she wrote Passing, 'passing' was already a common subject in African-American literature (James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man had appeared in 1912), and Larsen's contribution was to focus on the female experience of the phenomenon and its psychological complexities.
Is there a queer reading of Passing?
Yes, and it has become the dominant critical reading. Irene's relationship with Clare is more than friendship: the narration is full of details that suggest physical attraction (Irene's repeated attention to Clare's beauty, her lips, her body), and Irene's anxiety about Clare can be understood as the anxiety of someone who is attracted to a person they consider dangerous. The theory that Irene is in love with Clare — and that her final action, whatever it was, is an act of passion — is supported by the novella's consistent pattern of Irene displacing her feelings onto concerns about safety and race. Larsen herself lived in Harlem at a time when it had a significant queer community (the Harlem Renaissance was notably queer in ways that the period's biographers have documented), and the queer subtext of Passing fits both its historical moment and Larsen's own biography.
What should I read after Passing?
After Passing, Larsen's Quicksand (1928) is the essential companion. For the Harlem Renaissance tradition, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and Jessie Redmon Fauset's Plum Bun (1929) are important. For Morrison's succession to Larsen's concerns, Sula (1973) and The Bluest Eye (1970) are most directly in dialogue. For the passing novel tradition more broadly, James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) and Philip Roth's The Human Stain (2000) extend the genre across generations. Thadious Davis's Nella Larsen: Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance (1994) is the standard biography.
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