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Toni Morrison and the Burden of the Passing Narrative - Critical Essay

African American Review, Summer, 2001 by Juda Bennett

Passing for white, a phenomenon that once captivated writers as diverse as Charles Chesnutt, Sinclair Lewis, Nella Larsen, and Mark Twain, no longer seems to engage contemporary novelists. The long list of authors from the first half of the twentieth century, which includes canonical writers like William Faulkner and forgotten stars like Edna Ferber, is hardly balanced by the short list of contemporary writers who have addressed this figure of racial ambiguity. In considering the relative disappearance of the passing figure from contemporary literature, this essay begins with neither a clear and substantial presence nor a complete absence of passing in the work of one of our most important novelists, Toni Morrison. [1]

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In each of her seven novels and in her sole short story, Toni Morrison invokes the passing myth, sometimes in only one or two paragraphs and often with indirection. The Bluest Eye, for example, features a dark-skinned child who cannot possibly pass for white, yet Pecola ignores biology and becomes (if only to herself) a blue-eyed Shirley Temple. Although some might consider Pecola's delusion a weak or perhaps specious representation of passing for white, The Bluest Eye artfully reinforces its interest in racial passing by alluding to Peola, the passing figure in Imitation of Life. This intertextual play effectively evokes the myth without actually representing the phenomenon of passing, and in this way Morrison decenters and deforms the traditional passing figure. Why?

It is my hope that this overview, although focused on Morrison, will be suggestive of larger shifts in culture, politics, and aesthetics. Why, for example, has the passing figure, after holding a central place in the imaginations of early-twentieth-century writers, been consigned to the margins of late-twentieth-century novels concerned with race? Why did Nella Larsen and Langston Hughes address the subject directly, even entitling works Passing and "Who's Passing for Who?" while Morrison approaches the subject indirectly and often in a subplot or through an allusion? Are there certain stories that are considered embarrassing, passe, or even dangerous? Are there stories, furthermore, that simply cannot be told or, rather, cannot be told simply?

Perhaps we are too far from what F. James Davis has called the "peak years for passing ... probably from 1880 to 1925." Or perhaps these passing narratives, which frequently move from the desire for white privilege to the tortures of racial denial, seem treasonous or even unimaginable in a post-1960s, post-Black Power world. If there are social forces steering creative writers away from this topic, it becomes especially important to look at the survival, albeit in altered form, of the theme.

In the last twenty years, for example, there has been an explosion of literary theory and criticism, biography and autobiography, history and sociology, all devoted to the theme and phenomenon of passing for white. In 1986, Deborah McDowell's provocative introduction to Nella Larsen's Passing was instrumental in securing Larsen new readers as well as sparking critical interest in the rich complexity of passing. Since McDowell's introduction, scholars as diverse as Judith Butler, Werner Sollors, and Henry Louis Gates have addressed this subject from their various points of view, adding to our understanding of passing as a literary device, a philosophical conundrum, and a historical phenomenon. [2] Gayle Wald and a host of other young scholars have first books devoted to theoretical and critical studies of passing. [3] Passing, it should be noted, represents a quickly evolving field of study with a complex history that has only begun to be written. [4] In addition to the scholarly books on passing, there have been many life-stories written for popular audiences. Life on the Color Line, for example, is one of several memoirs about passing that can claim bestseller status, and Shirlee Haizlipp's The Sweeter the Juice captured the attention of Oprah Winfrey and her audiences in 1995, perhaps inspiring other biographies and essay collections. [5]

This enormously rich production of nonfiction, when positioned against the few and limited representations of passing in contemporary fiction, is startling. How do we account for this contemporaneous fascination and disinterest in the passing figure? In pursuing the diminished attention to the passing figure in contemporary fiction, I am faced with either analyzing an absence (never an easy thing to do, despite the rewards) or examining the brief infiltrations and masked appearances of this discomfiting, controversial, or unwanted figure. Toni Morrison, with her many brief representations of passing, allows me to pursue the latter strategy. [6]

In examining Morrison's work, I have found it useful to divide the various representations of passing into three categories. In The Bluest Eye and Tar Baby, Morrison presents characters who are not capable of physically passing for white, and so the dynamics of crossing the color line are moved from the body to the psyche. In these novels, passing has been radically reconfigured to exclude the traditional light-skinned figure of ambiguity and replace this figure with allusion to and parody of racial passing. In Song of Solomon and Jazz, the traditional figure reappears, fully capable of passing for white and associated with the familiar themes of the fractured family and the conflicted identity; however, these novels present the passing figure indirectly through memories that are partially lost, distorted, or made ambiguous in the telling. Sing and Golden Gray, therefore, represent the traditional passing figure as a problematic and partially lost essence. Finally, in "Recitatif" and Paradise, two narratives that highlight the importance of racial identity even as they refuse to reveal which character is black and which is white, Morrison recasts the drama of passing between text and reader. Because the racial identities of some of the major characters are made obscure only to the reader and not to the characters within the narrative, the dynamics of passing moves with a metafictional playfulness between text and reader. The passing theme survives despite the removal of an essential passing figure because it highlights a passing dynamic. [7]

Toni Morrison and the Burden of the Passing Narrative - Critical Essay

African American Review, Summer, 2001 by Juda Bennett

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