Inhaltsangabe:Introduction: My old man died in a fine big house. My ma died in a shack. I wonder where I m gonna die. Being neither white nor black? These are the first words with which Nella Larsen commences her novel Quicksand in 1928. The quatrain belongs to the poem Cross (1925) by Larsen s contemporary Langston Hughes and addresses the issue of duality, where mixed racial heritage leads to self-doubt and struggle in the definition of identity. Larsen and other African-American writers, including James Weldon Johnson, explored the intricacies and contradictions of the concept of race at the beginning of the 20th century, in particular by addressing the phenomenon of passing . Passing has many definitions, most often it is associated with the term passing for white , which implies the crossing of the colour line from black to white in order to transcend racial barriers. Ratna Roy refers to it as assimilating into white society by concealing one s antecedents and according to Sollors, passing can be understood in a more general sense as the crossing of any line that divides social groups. Perhaps most importantly is to understand passing as the ability of a person to be completely accepted as a member of a sociological group other than their own. Until the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, writers hardly had addressed the passing figure in literature because racial passing only thrived in modern social systems in which as a primary condition, social and geographic mobility prevailed. Passing has always been a much camouflaged topic because the successful passer does not want their identity to be uncloaked. This constitutes probably also the main reason why only little, and rather pioneering, research has been conducted up to today and why it still remains difficult to investigate the issue. The sole witnesses of the concepts of passing in the time period are passing narratives. James Weldon Johnson s Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man (initially published anonymously in 1912 but reissued under Johnson s authorship in 1927), Nella Larsen s Quicksand (1928) and her novella Passing (1929) are perhaps the most exemplary and promising examples of an analysis of the passing figure and classic epitomes of the racial situations during the Harlem Renaissance. The novels challenge stereotypes of race and disclose concepts of doubleness and visibility. In order to disentangle the complexities of the theme, these novels, [...]

Larsen and other African-American writers, including James Weldon Johnson, explored the intricacies and contradictions of the concept of race at the beginning of the 20th century, in particular by addressing the phenomenon of 'passing'. Passing has many definitions, most often it is associated with the term 'passing for white', which implies the crossing of the colour line from black to white in order to transcend racial barriers. Until the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, writers hardly had addressed the passing figure in literature. Passing has always been a much camouflaged topic because the successful passer does not want their identity to be uncloaked. This constitutes probably also the main reason why only little, and rather pioneering, research has been conducted up to today and why it still remains difficult to investigate the issue. The sole witnesses of the concepts of passing in the time period are passing narratives. James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man (1912), Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and her novella Passing (1929) are perhaps the most exemplary examples of an analysis of the passing figure and classic epitomes of the racial situations during the Harlem Renaissance. The novels challenge stereotypes of race and disclose concepts of doubleness and visibility. In order to disentangle the complexities of the theme, these novels, will serve to examine in depth in the nature and the motifs of the phenomenon of passing. In this book, I will be exploring the motifs of passing in these novels of the Harlem Renaissance in the context of DuBois' concept of double consciousness and the discourse of race. Chapter One will set the critical historical and cultural context for the passing narratives, as this is indispensable and crucial for the understanding of the motifs of the theme. With this in mind, the second Chapter will account for what destabilizes the African-American identity and thus identify the motives of p

The protagonist of this fictional autobiography wrestles with race in America from the perspective of someone who learns that he is considered black but also that he can pass as white if he wants to. His personal ambitiousness and racial ambivalence makes him a sort of American Hamlet: undone by indecision. Will he be “a credit to his race” by advancing an African-American heritage he loves and appreciates in the face of a hostile culture, or will he retreat into the mediocrity of a safe, white, middle-class family life? Along the way, he shares his penetrating observations about race relations in the American north and south, about the “freemasonry” of subterranean black American culture, about the emerging bohemian jazz subculture in New York City, and about traditions of African American religious music and oratory. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

First published anonymously in 1912, this resolutely unsentimental novel gave many white readers their first glimpse of the double standard -- and double consciousness -- that ruled the lives of black people in modern America. Republished in 1927, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, with an introduction by Carl Van Vechten, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man became a groundbreaking document of Afro-American culture; the first first-person novel ever written by a black, it became an eloquent model for later novelists ranging from Zora Neale Hurston to Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. Narrated by a man whose light skin enables him to "pass" for white, the novel describes a journey through the strata of black society at the turn of the century -- from a cigar factory in Jacksonville to an elite gambling club in New York, from genteel aristocrats to the musicians who hammered out the rhythms of ragtime. The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man is a complex and moving examination of the question of race and an unsparing look at what it meant to forge an identity as a man in a culture that recognized nothing but color.

"The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" is James Weldon's Johnson fictional account of a light-skinned mulatto who can pass for white. The anonymous narrator is the son of a black mother and a white father living in the early part of the 20th century in the rural south, the urban north and in Europe. The novel masterfully explores the complexity of race relations between whites and blacks in America and the search for racial identity by one of mixed ethnicity.

Institutional racism has had a major impact on the development of African American self-esteem and group identity. Through the years, African Americans have developed strong, tenacious concepts of self partially based on African cultural and philosophical retentions and as a reaction to historical injustices. The Concept of Self examines the historical basis for the widely misunderstood ideas of how African Americans think of themselves individually, and how they relate to being part of a group that has been subjected to challenges of their very humanity. Richard Allen examines past scholarship on African American identity to explore a wide range of issues leading to the formation of an individual and collective sense of self. Allen traces the significance of social forces that have impinged on the lives of African Americans and points to the uniqueness of their position in American society. He then focuses on the results from the National Survey of Black Americans-a national survey of African Americans on a wide range of political, social, and psychological issues-to develop a model of African self. Allen explores the idea of double-consciousness as put forth by W.E.B. DuBois against the more recent debates of Afrocentricity or an African-centered consciousness. He proposes a set of interrelated hypotheses regarding how African Americans might use an African worldview for the upliftment of Africans in the Diaspora. The Concept of Self will interest students and scholars of African American studies, sociology and population studies.