Nella Larsen, _Passing_

 BACK IN THE mid-1980s, I picked up a paperback that contained both Quicksand and this. I read Quicksand, liked it well enough without liking it a great deal, and never got around to Passing. My mistake--Passing is quite a bit more interesting. The recent film adaptation inspired me to pick it up, and I wound up teaching it in one of my courses this spring.

One hot day while visiting Chicago, Irene Redfield of Harlem (doctor husband, two sons) encounters a childhood friend she has not seen in years. They lost touch because the light-skinned Claire has been "passing," living as a White woman, even marrying and (riskily) having a child with a White man who has no idea Claire grew up Black. The renewal of the friendship is pulled up short by an awkward meeting with Claire's racist husband, who does not suspect that Irene (also very light-skinned) is Black and airs some disparaging opinions about those he does not  realize are his wife's and his guest's people.

Irene wants nothing more to do with Claire, taking a stand in which she is seconded by her husband, Brian, alongside whom she is very active in what we now call the Harlem Renaissance. Claire, however, who seems fascinated by the new Harlem, keeps showing up in New York City, cultivating Irene, ingratiating herself in their circle of friends--what is she after? Doesn't she know the risk she is running?

Irene decides Claire has set her cap for Brian. Tensions mount. The dung hits the propellor at an evening party in Harlem. Claire ends up dead, without our being told exactly what went down.

Part of the brilliance of this novella lies in Larsen's keeping to Irene's point of view, so we never know what is going on inside Claire. Her mystery is alluring. Does she regret the deal she made in passing? Does she want to reclaim her Blackness? Is she really interested in Brian? Or is she really interested in...Irene?

Or ...is Irene interested in Claire? Because another part of the brilliance of this novella is the simmering lesbian subtext. Irene scorns Claire's choices, distrusts Claire's motives, fears Claire's cunning, but she also finds Claire fascinating, charming, and (as is repeatedly noted) gorgeous.

So when Claire and Irene are standing at an open upper-story window at the party when Claire's husband bursts in shouting and threatening, and seconds later Claire is dead on the sidewalk, what exactly happened? Larsen isn't telling, but the ending is pretty darned discussable, let me tell you.