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This 3 page paper examines the book Passing, and argues that it, like Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, is about an America that forces its black citizens into a life of invisibility. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
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3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVPassng.rtf
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when black writers, artists, actors and others created extraordinary pieces of work. This paper examines the book Passing, and argues that it, like Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man, is about
an America that forces its black citizens into a life of invisibility. Discussion The first thing of note is that the novel, while a work of fiction, is still
highly autobiographical, though whether or not Larsen understood that is open to debate. Certainly her background informed her work: "Nella Larsen was deeply scarred by the reality of
racism; her seeking of celebrity as a wrier was in fact a symptom of the need for recognition and validation, something which she never received as a child and only
tenuously as a young adult" (Sullivan, 1998). Larsen was the daughter of a Danish immigrant mother and African-American father, which meant that she was "doubly marginalized in American society"
(Sullivan, 1998). Her mother remarried; the second marriage was to a white man, after which "Larsen found herself so excluded from the family that her mother did not even
report her existence to census takers in 1910" (Sullivan, 1998). Apparently neither her mother nor stepfather could deal with the fact that the girl was half-black, so they sent
her to school in Nashville when she was 15; finally, when she was 16, her mother told her "to make her own way in the world" (Sullivan, 1998). Larsens
climb from utter rejection to success was due entirely to her own efforts. What Larsen must surely have learned from this bitter upbringing was the lesson that many blacks have
learned at the hands of whites: they are inferior, worthless, something to be hidden away - in this case, in shame. What a horrible thing to happen to
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