Racial passing

As well as exposing the continued ill-treatment and oppression of people from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, the Black Lives Matter movement also served as a reminder – to me and countless others – of the huge range of black-authored literature which is often overlooked by white readers and critics alike. Various websites and booksellers published lists of must-read BAME authors, and I was certainly glad to be pointed in the direction of a number of great books (both non-fiction and fiction), some of which I’d not even heard of, let alone read. 

Two of the novels I’ve read this year which both moved and fascinated me were Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) and Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half (2020). Whilst written nearly 100 years apart, they both deal with the concept of ‘passing’.

‘Passing’ is a sociological term describing the ability of a person to be regarded as the member of an identity group or category different from their own, whether that identity be related to race, gender, sexuality or disability etc. Both these novels focus on ‘racial passing’ and have at the centre of their narrative two black women who are light enough to pass as white.

Racial passing as a phenomenon is particularly connected to the USA, and Passing and The Vanishing Half are both American novels. In the days of slavery, sexual relationships (many of which, though not all, were non-consensual) between black female slaves and their white masters were a far from uncommon occurrence. Over time the number of interracial relationships increased leading to a rise in the number of pale-skinned black people. Whilst officially anyone with black ancestry was considered – and treated – as black, many found they could ‘pass’ as white in order to evade the restrictions against them.

Nella Larsen (1891-1964) was herself a pale-skinned black woman, the daughter of a mixed-race father and a white Danish mother. Passing opens with the reunion of two childhood friends, Clare and Irene, after 12 years of no contact. Both women are of mixed African-European ancestry and can ‘pass’ as white. However, each has made a different choice. Whilst Clare has chosen to ‘pass’ permanently, identifying as white and marrying a white man who is racist and knows nothing of her past, Irene identifies as black, marrying a black man and only ‘passing’ when it is convenient to do so (for example if she wishes to enter a department store). When the women reconnect and discover the different paths their lives have taken the seeds are sown for a tragic ending.

Brit Bennett (born 1990) also takes this idea of two characters choosing different paths, but in her case they are twin sisters. Desiree and Stella Vignes grow up in a small town in Louisiana in the 1950s. The town Mallard is a black town, but also a social experiment, founded by Alphonse Decuir in 1848 when he is freed from slavery by his father (a white plantation owner). A pale-skinned black man, Decuir imagines building a new town on the land he now owns which his father has bequeathed to him, ‘A town for men like him, who would never be accepted as white but refused to be treated as Negroes’. When he marries a woman whose skin is even lighter than his, ‘he imagined his children’s children’s children, lighter still, like a cup of coffee steadily diluted with cream. A more perfect Negro. Each generation lighter than the one before.‘

Stella and Desiree are Decuir’s great-great-great-granddaughters, identical twins whose skin is extremely light: ‘he would have been thrilled by the sight of his great-great-great-granddaughters. Twin girls, creamy skin, hazel eyes, wavy hair.’ One night they vanish, after the annual dance in honour of Decuir, and head to the big city – New Orleans. Whilst Desiree reclaims her black ancestry, marries a black man and gives birth to a black daughter, Jude, Stella – like Clare in Larsen’s Passing – passes as white and cuts herself off from her sister and her past. She marries her white boss, who is ignorant of her true racial identity, and embarks on a life of wealth and privilege. However, when her white daughter, Kennedy, comes into contact with her cousin Jude, the scene is set for an earth-shattering revelation.

The novel shifts between different points in time, opening in 1968 when Desiree, fleeing her violent and abusive husband, returns to Mallard with her young daughter Jude, before rewinding back to the early 1950s and the build up to the sisters’ departure, and then spooling forward to the 1980s and the young cousins’ chance encounter.

One episode in the 1950s section, which foreshadows Desiree’s decision to reclaim her black identity, involves a young black delivery boy, Early Jones, with whom the teenage Desiree forms an immediate bond. Early is ‘the wrong sort of boy’ because he is dark, not light-skinned, and a prospective relationship between the two young people is aborted when he turns up at the house and Desiree mother is at home. She turns him away, saying ‘“Best be goin’ now … I don’t have no courtin’ girls here”; from that moment Early is not seen again.

However, when Desiree comes home in 1968 she encounters Early again. Now working as a private investigator of sorts, who hunts down missing people, he has ironically been hired by Desiree’s abusive husband to find her. When Early realises who Desiree is, he refuses to disclose her whereabouts so that he can have a second shot at happiness.

Back in the 1950s in their nascent courting days, Early, in addition to bringing the family’s shopping, would leave fruit on the front porch for Desiree: ‘Each evening… she found a plum on the porch banister, or a peach, or a napkin filled with blackberries. Nectarines and pears and rhubarb, more fruit than she could finish, fruit she hid in her apron to savor later or bake into pies.’

You can’t get much more American than a fruit pie, so that’s what I made. Any of the fruit that Early gave Desiree would make a great pie, but I happened to have cherries so that’s the filling I used. I didn’t have as many cherries as the recipe below requires, so as you can probably see from the photo my pie is rather small (it only served 2).

CHERRY PIE
Ingredients (serves 4-6):
For the pastry:
250g plain flour
125g cold unsalted butter, diced
50g sifted icing sugar
1 large egg, beaten
For the filling:
500-600g pitted cherries, fresh or frozen (defrosted over a sieve with the juice drained off)
1 small egg, beaten
1-2 tablespoons caster sugar
2 tablespoons demerara sugar
 
Method:
Begin by making the pastry. Put the flour in a large bowl and rub in the butter using your fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the icing sugar. Add in the beaten egg slowly, using a knife to bring the mixture together into a ball – you might not need all the egg so don’t pour it all in in one go. Cover the bowl and place in the fridge for approximately 30 minutes.

Remove the pastry from the fridge. Lightly flour a surface (table, kitchen side) and, using a rolling pin, roll out the dough to make a rough circle. This pie is meant to look rustic so no need to be very precise. Using the rolling pin, lift the dough onto a greased baking tray. Using a pastry brush, brush a circle of egg onto the pastry. Then pile the cherries on that, sprinkling with the caster sugar (to taste). Gather the edges of the pastry up and over the fruit, leaving a gap in the middle (so the fruit can be seen). Brush the surface of the pastry with the remaining egg and sprinkle the demerara sugar on top. Place in the fridge for 20-30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200C / 180C fan/ Gas mark 6. Bake the pie for 30-35 minutes until golden brown. Serve hot with ice cream or crème fraiche.