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469 reviews

This book is a warm hug on a cold day. It’s a kiss on the forehead from someone you love. It’s holding hands for the first time with a crush. The prose is sparse but beautiful. It’s a queer, indigenous coming of age story that deals with cultural belonging and first love and navigating queerness in spaces that don’t necessarily feel welcoming. I adored this book.

Content Warnings

Passing by Nella Larsen

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I’m not sure why it took me so long to read this book. It clocks in at 176 pages, so its not daunting because of its size. Sometimes I think I put off reading classics because I’m afraid I won’t like them. Or won’t understand them. It’s imposter syndrome 101. But in this case I had literally nothing to worry about.

Passing is about two affluent Black women, Irene and Clare, living in the 1920s Harlem who knew each other as children. When the two women have a chance encounter on a rooftop hotel bar as adults, Irene, who is light-skinned and occasionally passes as white out of convenience, realizes that Clare is living her life passing a white woman. No one in Clare’s life, including her husband and daughter, know that she is Black.

This chance encounter brings the women into each other’s orbit, much to Irene’s dismay. As Clare imposes more and more on Irene’s life and into her social circles, she risks exposing the secret she’s kept hidden for so long. But Irene suspects that Clare secretly lives for the thrill that this risk brings her, and maybe even wants the secret to come out?

The book is an excellent depiction of race and class and it was hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that it was written in the 1920s. I secretly loved Clare so much. She was messy and chaotic and unhinged in a way that I feel like we, as a society, are only just now accepting of (and celebrating) in our female characters. Both Clare and Irene were extremely “unlikeable” which makes it even harder for me to believe this was written 100 years ago.

Content Warnings