Passing (Nce): A Norton Critical Edition: 0 (Norton Critical Editions) - Softcover

Larsen, Nella

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393979164 ISBN 13: 9780393979169

Publisher: WW Norton & Co, 2007

Synopsis

Larsen's status as a Harlem Renaissance woman writer was rivaled by only Zora Neale Hurston's. This Norton Critical Edition of her electrifying 1929 novel includes Carla Kaplan's detailed and thought-provoking introduction, thorough explanatory annotations, and a Note on the Text. An unusually rich "Background and Contexts" section connects the novel to the historical events of the day, most notably the sensational Rhinelander/Jones case of 1925. Fourteen contemporary reviews are reprinted, including those by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Mary Griffin, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Published accounts from 1911 to 1935--by Langston Hughes, Juanita Ellsworth, and Caleb Johnson, among others--provide a nuanced view of the contemporary cultural dimensions of race and passing, both in America and abroad. Also included are Larsen's statements on the novel and on passing, as well as a generous selection of her letters and her central writings on "The Tragic Mulatto(a)" in American literature. Additional perspective is provided by related Harlem Renaissance works. "Criticism" provides fifteen diverse critical interpretations, including those by Mary Helen Washington, Cheryl A. Wall, Deborah E. McDowell, David L. Blackmore, Kate Baldwin, and Catherine Rottenberg. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

About this title

Review:

A work so fine, sensitive, and distinguished that it rises above race categories and becomes that rare object, a good novel. Saturday Review of Literature"

"A work so fine, sensitive, and distinguished that it rises above race categories and becomes that rare object, a good novel." --Saturday Review of Literature

"It is a tragic story rooted in inescapable facts of American life: that whiteness conferred an almost universal unearned advantage, and that loyalty to a black racial identity was not only an act of pride but also one of courage."
- The New York Times

About the Author:

Carla Kaplan is the Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at Northeastern University. She is the author of The Erotics of Talk: Women's Writing and Feminist Paradigms, Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, and Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance (forthcoming). She is also editor of Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk Tales from the Gulf States and Dark Symphony and Other Works by Elizabeth Laura Adams.

About this edition

• Publisher: WW Norton & Co
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0393979164
• ISBN 13: 9780393979169
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 584