Passing into the present : contemporary American fiction of racial and gender passing / Sinéad Moynihan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Moynihan, Sinéad, author.

Series:

Contemporary American and Canadian writers.

Contemporary American and Canadian writers

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--21st century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Passing (Identity) in literature.

Ethnicity in literature.

Gender identity in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 181 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

This book is a full-length study of contemporary American fiction of 'passing'. It takes as its point of departure the return of racial and gender passing in the 1990s in order to make claims about wider trends in contemporary American fiction. The book accounts for the return of tropes of passing in fiction by Phillip Roth, Percival Everett, Louise Erdrich, Danzy Senna, Jeffrey Eugenides and Paul Beatty. These writers are attracted to the trope because passing narratives have always foregrounded the notion of textuality in relation to the legibility of black subjects passing as white. The central argument of the book, then, is that contemporary narratives of passing are concerned with articulating and unpacking an analogy between passing and authorship. The book promises to inaugurate dialogue on the relationships between identity, postmodernism and authorship in contemporary American fiction.

Contents:

Copyright; Contents; Series editors' foreword; Acknowledgements; 1 Introduction: 'passing' into the present: passing narratives then and now; 2 Living parchments, human documents: passing, racial identity and the literary marketplace; 3 The way of the cross( -dresser): Catholicism, gender and race in two novels by Louise Erdrich; 4 (W)Rites-of-passing: shifting racial and gender identities in Caucasia and Middlesex; 5 Bodies/texts: passing and writing in The White Boy Shuffle and The Human Stain; 6 Conclusion: 'passing' fads?: recent controversies of authenticity and authorship; Bibliography.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 27 Apr 2026).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781781702727

1781702721

9781847793294

1847793290

OCLC:

818847440