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Passing
Like a glass of lemonade that is both sweet and tart, writer Patricia Jones mixes up a refreshing blend of deep emotion and raw truth, tempered by a grounded dose of wisdom. To Lila Giles, the term "passing" refers to those pale-hued folks who take advantage of their creamy shade by crossing into the white world. Descended from a long line of an elite Baltimore family awash with "high-colored" skin just right for "passing", family lore told Lila that not one of them would have thought to deny their true selves and rich history in such a way. It is this sense of pride that bonds the Giles family together -- a bond strongly enforced by Lila's controlling stepmother Eulelie. But the delicate balance of this branch of the family Eulelie has so carefully engineered is threatened when Lila's brother decides to marry a woman from an oh-so-very-wrong family. A proud though severe matriarch, Eulelie Giles has ruled her four grown stepchildren with a heavy self-righteousness that could break the spirit of the most sound opponent, let alone the nearly thirty-year-old Lila. Relentlessly loyal to her privileged world, Eulelie has ingrained upon Lila and her three other stepchildren the importance of distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable blacks. Despite her strident belief in an unyielding class line, Eulelie has kept a secret about her own past that manages to affect, in more ways than a few, anyone who enters her life. As the wedding day draws closer, Lila begins to look at her reality versus Eulelie's, and what Lila finds leads to a confrontation between stepmother and stepdaughter that could finally shatter Eulelie's reign over Lila and the family, but ultimately, one that will lead Eulelie back to the truth. Filled with multi-dimensional characters and rich with atmosphere, Passing is a story of tangled family relationships; the secrets, misunderstanding, and deceptions that hold them together.
384 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 19, 2019
Eulelie Giles is a complicated woman with a story. We all have stories. Who are we to judge others when we all have stories?
Eulelie is an intraethnic classist: she thinks lower- and higher-class Blacks should be kept separate. She is a snob, who raises another woman's children to have her superciliousness.
The prologue to this story ends this way: "... it always seemed to dead-end quietly with the unsettling notion that her mother was a black woman passing as a white woman, passing as a black woman. And to understand this conundrum was to try to understand her mother, Eulelie Giles."
That was the phrase that persuaded me to continue reading. That phrase and the title. I will read just about anything written on the subject. I'm pretty satisfied that I picked this good read up at my local Friends of the Library book sale.
Just finished my second reading of this novel and it leaves me more satisfied the second time around.
Eulelie is an intraethnic classist: she thinks lower- and higher-class Blacks should be kept separate. She is a snob, who raises another woman's children to have her superciliousness.
The prologue to this story ends this way: "... it always seemed to dead-end quietly with the unsettling notion that her mother was a black woman passing as a white woman, passing as a black woman. And to understand this conundrum was to try to understand her mother, Eulelie Giles."
That was the phrase that persuaded me to continue reading. That phrase and the title. I will read just about anything written on the subject. I'm pretty satisfied that I picked this good read up at my local Friends of the Library book sale.
Just finished my second reading of this novel and it leaves me more satisfied the second time around.
January 7, 2022
There is a Cinderella vibe to this story.... the deceitful, ambitious step mother, 3 daughters, a future daughter in law not being good enough. There is a Prince Charming for Cinderella. Does the step mother get justice? Yes, all the lies come out.
Pretty good read, a bit repetitive.
Pretty good read, a bit repetitive.
November 10, 2008
The only reason I finished this was because I had to read it for a class (on passing, which was fascinating overall). The only reason it gets one star is that there's something of a story there, but like too much of what passes for so-called "urban" fiction these days, this went out without the benefit of a (good? slightly decent? breathing?) editor.
A far more coherent and less soap-opera-ish treatment of this subject can be found with Nella Larsen's two best-known works, Passing and Quicksand (both of which I had to read for the same class).
A far more coherent and less soap-opera-ish treatment of this subject can be found with Nella Larsen's two best-known works, Passing and Quicksand (both of which I had to read for the same class).
January 1, 2026
WOW Patricia Jones!! Thank you for this surprising and truly memorable read I just finished. The story from the beginning had me wrapped in until the very end. I truly exceeded my reading goal for one day in picking up this book. What a great book to have some great discussions about family dynamics and new and old traditions. But not only family traditions, but this book also touched on colorism in the black community, which still exists to this day. I felt all emotions reading this book, and I even shared the story and had my own discussion session with my partner. I'll definitely be looking for another Patricia Jones read.
July 31, 2017
I read this book for my online book club. Ugh-0h. Wrong "Passing." This was an interesting story, a little too long, with a little bit of repetition. I probably would have stopped reading if I had not wanted to finish for the book club, but it did get a bit better toward the end. I did feel the characters were too shallow.
January 15, 2023
I really tried to get into this book, but the story just dragged to me. It had parts where I was like oh wow, but I kept feeling tired when I read it and would read a page or two at a time.
January 29, 2009
Ok, just finished reading this book. It started a little slow for me so I was definately dragging my feet about reading it. Close to the 100th page the book picked up. It was about how a black woman tries to pass off as being a high society member of Baltimore, Maryland. When in fact she was born dirt poor in the deepest part of the Carolinas. Throughout the book the woman tries to rear her 3 daughters and son to turn up their noses' at people who were not born on the 'right side of the tracks'. For many years she has pulled off the lie of coming from a long line of black entrepreuners and socialites, until someone threatens it all.
There is this one saying in the book that summarizes the whole story: "The only thing that is secret about a secret is how many people know". Although the book was ok, this is now one of my new favorite quotes. I feel that the author could have written a better story on this particular topic...that's why the book was just okay to me.
There is this one saying in the book that summarizes the whole story: "The only thing that is secret about a secret is how many people know". Although the book was ok, this is now one of my new favorite quotes. I feel that the author could have written a better story on this particular topic...that's why the book was just okay to me.
September 22, 2024
"The only thing that is secret about a secret is how many people know".
First: I really want to know how no one on Patricia Jones' publishing team thought to renew this title something else given Nella Larsen's book. The only explanation I can come up with is Larsen's PASSING wasn't as famous yet since she had faded into obscurity but this is a claim I can't verify since I couldn't find interviews with Jones.
The story is entertaining because the Giles family is a mess; self righteous snobs who are also naive and loving towards one other. The siblings snipe at each other but they are also hiding their own secrets, one of the pleasures of the novel was watching them slowly begin to bond over memories of their deceased mother who passed when they were very young. Eulelie is their stepmother who raised them but her story is more complicated than merely being the evil stepmother, she can be mean but also loving and her rudeness is primarily driven by fear. I wanted deeper characterization for Lucretia and Linda but they did get off some hilarious one liners especially when it comes to dating, there's a scene involving a two timing man in their social circle that had me audibly laughing as it dissolves into chaos. There is also some obvious but sharp writing about elitism, in an early scene where Sandra meets Eulelie she observes, "It was all she could do to keep that smile from exploding into a full-throated laugh. How all at once funny and pathetic, she thought, that Eulelie would hold slave rape with such disdain, yet it was the sole reason for the bright skin she held so high" (51). It felt heavy handed to read now but I wonder if that was the case when this was first written in 1999 especially since I can count novels about the Black upper class on two hands. This is also a book that is firmly centered within its setting, in this case 1980s or '90s Baltimore. White people are on the periphery of this novel, aside from some interactions Eulalie has with a vendor at the market. There are mentions of Friendship airport (BWI's old name) and Phillips restaurant along with depictions of Baltimore's many neighborhoods. I'd love for someone more familiar with the city's history and geography to read this and share how it ranks in authenticity. As written accents are mostly absent but I think that's to indicate that those accents were wielded by the working class, not the conceited wealthy folks, regardless of race.
This is a story that starts off slow and could have used fewer words, it didn't need to be almost 400 pages. I love a good 'rich people behaving badly' story but the story doesn't really pick up until 100 pages in and as we're dragged towards the end you're tired of the snobbery and their refusal to acknowledge it. There are also a lot of characters with long names to keep track of, not Sandra's family, but characters who are acquaintances of the Giles family, those in their social set. Next time I read this I'd annotate each character mentioned because I could not keep them straight. I also finished the novel thinking I'd missed something when it came to Eulelie's backstory but I didn't have it in me to re-read. Instead I wish her backstory had been presented sooner and probed more. There are some scenes with her family that come towards the end that needed to be extended.
PASSING is an amusing story about a Black upper class family in Baltimore who are grappling with complicated familial relationships, dating, secrets and class status. It's a story that hearkens back to a tireless theme in literature around class dysfunction and upper class anxiety. There are some spectacularly dramatic scenes in the family that were hysterical, this would have made for a good TV series when first published. At times the writing veered into hackneyed territory or the story was weighed down with overly ornate prose but for the most part I liked the writing style and its strong voice. I'm not sure I'd read another work by Jones but in my quest to continue to read and study how the Black elite are portrayed in fiction this was notable.
"More than a few had porches top and bottom, and some even had a porch that wrapped around the house. Porches, porches, porches. There were impressive porches. No one like her or Eustace lived in these houses or sat on these porches." (257)
First: I really want to know how no one on Patricia Jones' publishing team thought to renew this title something else given Nella Larsen's book. The only explanation I can come up with is Larsen's PASSING wasn't as famous yet since she had faded into obscurity but this is a claim I can't verify since I couldn't find interviews with Jones.
The story is entertaining because the Giles family is a mess; self righteous snobs who are also naive and loving towards one other. The siblings snipe at each other but they are also hiding their own secrets, one of the pleasures of the novel was watching them slowly begin to bond over memories of their deceased mother who passed when they were very young. Eulelie is their stepmother who raised them but her story is more complicated than merely being the evil stepmother, she can be mean but also loving and her rudeness is primarily driven by fear. I wanted deeper characterization for Lucretia and Linda but they did get off some hilarious one liners especially when it comes to dating, there's a scene involving a two timing man in their social circle that had me audibly laughing as it dissolves into chaos. There is also some obvious but sharp writing about elitism, in an early scene where Sandra meets Eulelie she observes, "It was all she could do to keep that smile from exploding into a full-throated laugh. How all at once funny and pathetic, she thought, that Eulelie would hold slave rape with such disdain, yet it was the sole reason for the bright skin she held so high" (51). It felt heavy handed to read now but I wonder if that was the case when this was first written in 1999 especially since I can count novels about the Black upper class on two hands. This is also a book that is firmly centered within its setting, in this case 1980s or '90s Baltimore. White people are on the periphery of this novel, aside from some interactions Eulalie has with a vendor at the market. There are mentions of Friendship airport (BWI's old name) and Phillips restaurant along with depictions of Baltimore's many neighborhoods. I'd love for someone more familiar with the city's history and geography to read this and share how it ranks in authenticity. As written accents are mostly absent but I think that's to indicate that those accents were wielded by the working class, not the conceited wealthy folks, regardless of race.
This is a story that starts off slow and could have used fewer words, it didn't need to be almost 400 pages. I love a good 'rich people behaving badly' story but the story doesn't really pick up until 100 pages in and as we're dragged towards the end you're tired of the snobbery and their refusal to acknowledge it. There are also a lot of characters with long names to keep track of, not Sandra's family, but characters who are acquaintances of the Giles family, those in their social set. Next time I read this I'd annotate each character mentioned because I could not keep them straight. I also finished the novel thinking I'd missed something when it came to Eulelie's backstory but I didn't have it in me to re-read. Instead I wish her backstory had been presented sooner and probed more. There are some scenes with her family that come towards the end that needed to be extended.
PASSING is an amusing story about a Black upper class family in Baltimore who are grappling with complicated familial relationships, dating, secrets and class status. It's a story that hearkens back to a tireless theme in literature around class dysfunction and upper class anxiety. There are some spectacularly dramatic scenes in the family that were hysterical, this would have made for a good TV series when first published. At times the writing veered into hackneyed territory or the story was weighed down with overly ornate prose but for the most part I liked the writing style and its strong voice. I'm not sure I'd read another work by Jones but in my quest to continue to read and study how the Black elite are portrayed in fiction this was notable.
"More than a few had porches top and bottom, and some even had a porch that wrapped around the house. Porches, porches, porches. There were impressive porches. No one like her or Eustace lived in these houses or sat on these porches." (257)
January 4, 2018
I thoroughly enjoyed this book! The title is deceptive. I thought it represented a black woman passing for white, but it was really more about your inner self and pretending to be something you're not. I thought the Giles' children were shallow and phony, but it was because of Eulelie and how she raised them...how could they not be. I loved Sandra and her family...they were real, honest, loving and genuine. There were enough twists and turns to keep you interested. I enjoyed this story so much and hated when I had to put it down and glad when I could pick it up again. Hope to see more from this author...much more.
August 1, 2020
Really interesting novel that has a kind of frantic climax that is out of place with the steady pace of the story. But the author ties it together with a completely unexpected ending.
January 13, 2009
EXCELLENT book
Read
August 2, 2010Great book. Not the same "Passing" my professor had us read. :-)
September 29, 2011
Author's first work of fiction and I loved it. Wonderful example of prejudice within a race.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews