Author: Larsen, Nella (Keywords)

When childhood friends Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield come across each other at a white-only restaurant, Irene learns her estranged friend has severed all ties to their African American community and is now married to a bigoted white man unaware of her heritage. Swinging between allure and repul...

'She wished to find out about this hazardous business of "passing," this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one's chance in another environment...'The elegant Clare Kendry glides through New York's high-society circles with ease, until the day she is reacquainted with h...

Clare Kendry is living on the edge. Light-skinned, elegant, and ambitious, she is married to a racist white man unaware of her African American heritage, and has severed all ties to her past after deciding to 'pass' as a white woman. Clare's childhood friend, Irene Redfield, just as light-skinned...

This Signet Classics edition of Passing includes an Introduction by Brit Bennett, the bestselling author of The Vanishing Half.Irene Redfield is a Black woman living an affluent, comfortable life with her husband and children in the thriving neighborhood of Harlem in the 1920s. When she reconnect...

Clare and Irene were childhood friends, both of African and European ancestry. They lost touch when Clare's father died, and she moved in with two paternal white aunts. The novel begins as the two childhood friends meet later in life.

Quicksand, from 1928, was the first novel expressing the sexual desires of a black woman in conflict between sexual fulfilment and middle-class respectability. Passing tackles themes of both black people who pass for white, and desire between women.