"Passing"

I read the novella "Passing" for my American Ethnic Literature class.  It is so rich.  On one level, it is a discourse on a mulatto woman who has spent her adult life "passing" as white attempting to return to her African American roots.  But SO MANY other voices join the discourse, including a chilling exploration of gender roles.  The interior backflips of the narrator often rang all too true, highlighting the complexity of navigating female identity in a world that would pin women against men, and so often against other women as well.  Next to one seemingly insignificant part of her narration, I wrote, "HOW DO ANY OF US LIVE AT ALL?"  Because, while the passage now reads as quite trivial, the momentum of the novella culminated in the acute and overwhelming awareness of how HEAVY and inescapable the navigation of social relationships can be.

I will reread this.  I may even write a paper on it.

"Yes, life went on precisely as before.  It was only she that had changed.  Knowing, stumbling on this thing, had changed her.  It was as if in a house long dim, a match had been struck, showing ghastly shapes where had been only blurred shadows.  ...

So like many other tea-parties she had had.  So unlike any of those others.  But she mustn't think yet.  Time enough for that after.  All the time in the world.  She had a second's flashing knowledge of what those words might portend.  Time with Brian.  Time without him.  It was gone, leaving in its place an almost uncontrollable impulse to laugh, to scream, to hurl things about.  She wanted, suddenly, to shock people, to hurt them, to make them notice her, to be aware of her suffering.  ...

It hurt.  Dear God!  How the thing hurt!  ... In that second she saw that she could bear anything, but only if no one knew that she had anything to bear.  It hurt.  It frightened her, but she could bear it. ...

It hurt.  It hurt like hell.  But it didn't matter, if no one knew.  If everything could go on as before.  If the boys were safe.  
It did hurt. 
But it didn't matter."

But it does matter.  It does matter.
Nella Larsen gave a voice to so many things that do matter, and that people, often women, spend a whole lifetime trying not to look at.