Neo-Passing: Performing Identity After Jim Crow

Description

Crossing old boundaries to create new identities African Americans once passed as whites to escape the pains of racism. Today’s neo-passing has pushed the old idea of passing in extraordinary new directions. A white author uses an Asian pen name; heterosexuals live “out” as gay; and, irony of ironies, whites try to pass as black. Mollie Godfrey and Vershawn Ashanti Young present essays that explore practices, performances, and texts of neo-passing in our supposedly postracial moment. The authors move from the postracial imagery of Angry Black White Boy and the issues of sexual orientation and race in ZZ Packer’s short fiction to the politics of Dave Chappelle’s skits as a black President George W. Bush. Together, the works reveal that the questions raised by neo-passing—questions about performing and contesting identity in relation to social norms—remain as relevant today as in the past. Gale Wald offers a foreword and Michele Elam an afterword. Contributors: Derek Adams, Christopher M. Brown, Martha J. Cutter, Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Alisha Gaines, Jennifer Glaser, Allyson Hobbs, Brandon J. Manning, Loran Marsan, Lara Narcisi, Eden Osucha, and Deborah Elizabeth Whaley COVER......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Contents......Page 8 Foreword: Passing and “Post-Race” / Gayle Wald......Page 10 Acknowledgments / Mollie Godfrey and Vershawn Ashanti Young......Page 16 Introduction: The Neo-Passing Narrative / Mollie Godfrey and Vershawn Ashanti Young......Page 22 Appendix to the Introduction: Neo-Passing Narratives: Teaching and Scholarly Resources......Page 50 PART I: NEW HISTORIES......Page 62 Introduction: Passing at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century......Page 64 1. Why Passing Is (Still) Not Passé after More Than 250 Years Sources from the Past and Present......Page 70 2. Passing for Postracial Colorblind Reading Practices of Zombies, Sheriffs, and Slaveholders......Page 89 3. Adam Mansbach’s Postracial Imaginary in Angry Black White Boy......Page 105 4. Black President Bush The Racial and Gender Politics behind Dave Chappelle’s Presidential Drag......Page 117 5. Seeing Race in Comics Passing, Witness, and the Spectacle of Racial Violence in Johnson and Pleece's Incognegro ......Page 138 PART II: NEW IDENTITIES......Page 154 Introduction: Passing at the Intersections......Page 156 6. Passing Truths: Identity-Immersion Journalism and the Experience of Authenticity......Page 163 7. Passing for Tan: Snooki and the Grotesque Reality of Ethnicity......Page 179 8. The Pass of Least Resistance Sexual Orientation and Race in ZZ Packer’s “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere"......Page 196 9. Neo-Passing and Dissociative Identities as Affective Strategies in Frankie and Alice......Page 214 10. “A New Type of Human Being” Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity as Perpetual Passing in Jeffrey Eugenide's Middlesex......Page 240 Afterword: Why Neo Now?......Page 262 Contributors......Page 268 Index......Page 272