A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life

A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life
Allyson Hobbs
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014
Rare Book Collection
Vanderbilt University Special Collections

Allyson Hobbs is an associate professor of United States history and the Director of African American Studies at Stanford University. Her first book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, provides a thorough history of racial passing from the late eighteenth century to the present, identifying the changing attitudes surrounding race and the reasons for which someone would pass as a different identity than their own. She frames racial passing as an exile, articulating the accompanying grief, loneliness, and isolation.