Nella Larsen’s Passing

The 1929 novel Passing, written by the Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen (1891-1964), tells of an unexpected reunion between two childhood friends, one having maintained her identity as a Black woman and the other passing as a white woman. Although not passing as white herself, Larsen understood navigating the color divide in America as the multiracial daughter of a white, Danish mother and an Afro-Caribbean father. Having racial passing as a predominant theme in her book shows the popular understanding of the phenomenon contemporary to Greene’s career at the Pierpont Morgan Library.