Julia S. Charles, "That Middle World: Race, Performance, and the Politics of Passing"
English | ISBN: 1469659573 | 2020 | 242 pages | EPUB | 11 MB
In this study of racial passing literature, Julia S. Charles highlights how mixed-race subjects invent cultural spaces for themselves-a place she terms that middle world-and how they, through various performance strategies, make meaning in the interstices between the Black and white worlds. Focusing on the construction and performance of racial identity in works by writers from the antebellum period through Reconstruction, Charles creates a new discourse around racial passing to analyze mixed-race characters' social objectives when crossing into other racialized spaces. To illustrate how this middle world and its attendant performativity still resonates in the present day, Charles connects contemporary figures, television, and film-including Rachel Dolezal and her Black-passing controversy, the FX show