Passing Over The Racial Mountain By Nella Larson: An Analysis

Passing Over The Racial Mountain Ever since slavery was first embarked upon, there has been a constant struggle for African Americans to sever the ties between their racial identity and the standards set for them by white folk. It wasn’t until the Harlem Renaissance that artists creatively articulated the African American experience through writing and music. During this time, people wrote literature that would appeal to a mixed audience, but individuals such as Langston Hughes made it known that African American artists planned to express their thoughts freely, without fearing rejection from the black or white community (“The Harlem Renaissance”).
“Passing”, a novel by Harlem Renaissance author Nella Larson is about the racial conflicts …show more content…
It is during this stage that she finds herself pondering the thought of “passing” as white. She realizes that she has many questions about how life would be if she were to pose as a white woman instead of being black. “There were things that she wanted to ask Clare Kendry. She wished to find out about this hazardous business of ‘passing,’ this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one’s chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly. What, for example, one did about background, how one accounted for oneself. And how one felt when one came into contact with other Negroes” (Larson …show more content…
Hughes says, “Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art. Without going outside his race, and even among the better classes with their "white" culture and conscious American manners, but still Negro enough to be different, there is sufficient material to furnish a black artist with a lifetime of creative work” ("The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"). He is saying that if the Negro artist were to look at the struggles between the black and white people, that he would have more inspiration, and the ability to be free. Like the Negro artist Irene broadens her horizons, and realizes that acknowledging one’s own struggle is the backbone to a more successful life. She grasps this idea when she thinks about her newly found realization towards the act of “passing”. She says, “Its funny about ‘passing.’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it” (Larson