Dying to Be Black: White-to-Black Racial Passing in Chesnutt's “Mars Jeems's Nightmare,” Griffin's Black Like Me, and Van Peebles's Watermelon Man

Abstract

Is racial passing passé? Not according to contemporary book sales. The theme remains central to at least three recent best sellers: Danzy Senna's Caucasia, Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist, and Philip Roth's The Human Stain. Roth's novel made it to the big screen this fall, just as Devil in a Blues Dress, the adaptation of Walter Mosley's novel starring Denzel Washington, did in 1995. Renewed academic attention is being paid, of late, to “classic” passing narratives; once-ignored ones, including Charles Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars, are being revived; and still others being reread in the context of passing.