Passing

by Nella Larsen

The novel as a form also had a long history as a space for reinforcing and shaping middle-class desires and self-understanding. Novels written under those terms could not hold within their imagination the life of a black person who passed without tragic consequence. Therefore, passing, in the literary tradition, did not allow for an exchange. Despite personal narratives to the contrary, in the collective imagination of many poets and novelists, the color line became insurmountable, a great divide that allowed for no border crossings. You were either on one side or on the other, and to be discovered between meant you were to be damned. The discrepancy between passing in the artist’s imagination and passing in history belies one of America’s most cherished myths about art—that somehow, it will get closer to the truth than recorded facts ever will. The discussion of passing in literature points out that sometimes the limits of the artist’s imagination overlooks whole swaths of experience.