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Passing
When People Can’t Be Who They Are
About
St. Louis Post-Dispatch Best Books of 2003
Despite the many social changes of the last half-century, many Americans still “pass”: black for white, gay for straight, and now in many new ways as well. We tend to think of passing in negative terms–as deceitful, cowardly, a betrayal of one’s self. But this compassionate book reveals that many passers today are people of good heart and purpose whose decision to pass is an attempt to bypass injustice, and to be more truly themselves.
Passing tells the poignant, complicated life stories of a black man who passed as a white Jew; a white woman who passed for black; a working class Puerto Rican who passes as privileged; a gay, Conservative Jewish seminarian and a lesbian naval officer who passed for straight; and a respected poet who radically shifts persona to write about rock ‘n roll.
The stories, interwoven with others from history, literature, and contemporary life, explore the many forms passing still takes in our culture; the social realities which make it an option; and its logistical, emotional, and moral consequences. We learn that there are still too many institutions, environments, and social situations that force honorable people to twist their lives into painful, deceit-ridden contortions for reasons that do not hold.
Passing explores a phenomenon that has long intrigued scholars, inspired novelists, and made hits of movies likeThe Crying Game and Boys Don’t Cry.
Excerpt
From Chapter One:
“To a ten-year-old African-American boy from the suburbs of Washington, the Baltimore neighborhood seemed like a war zone. Shortly before David Matthews and his father moved in, the backyard had been the scene of a gangland-style execution and the next-door neighbor, still suffering the post-traumatic effects of his tour in Vietnam, took solace in shooting his AK-47 outside his back door. All the same, the house was only a few short blocks from Bolton Hill, with its well-kept townhouses and Gramercy Park-like air. Ralph Matthews, David’s father, planned to renovate the row house and flip it for a profit as gentrification encroached, but that never quite worked out. In the years since he let the house go, there has been substantial redevelopment in the area, enough to make the old row house look that much more forlorn. In March of 2002, a slab of whitewashed plywood blocked the entranceway. Stenciled across the plank in red was the number to call ‘IF ANIMAL TRAPPED.’
“Madison Street is a recurrent theme in David Matthews’ conversation. He thought living there was torture. ‘I wouldn’t walk there until it was dark,” he recalled, “because the fewer people who saw me, the fewer chances I had of getting mugged.’ His father wanted his son to learn to survive in such an environment. “There are protections,” Ralph Matthews said. ‘And if you recognize them, you’re twice as strong. I knew all the hoodlums.’ His son might well have been threatened once in a while, but it was because he did not know “how to give off the right radar,” as Matthews senior put it. ‘And giving off I’m half-Jewish wasn’t it.’
Of his son’s itinerant passing, Ralph Matthews said, ‘I do wonder about that, about David’s trapeze act. In my own life, it’s not even a consideration.’ And in another conversation, he added, ‘The thing I don’t think we could answer is, where did it come from?’ . . .”
Notices
Honor, Notice, Passing
St. Louis Post-Dispatch – “Best books of 2003 – (Nonfiction): Passing: When People Can’t Be Who They Are”
" . . . this intriguing book looks at people who pretend to be what they aren't . . . "
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Passing, Review
PW FORECASTS; Nonfiction; Pg. 55
August 25, 2003 Monday PASSING: When People Can’t Be Who They Are Brooke Kroeger. Public Affairs, $25 (240p) ISBN 1-891620-99-1 Biographer Kroeger, whose lives of reporter Nellie Bly (1994) and […]
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Interview, Passing
Curve – “Q & A: Brooke Kroeger”
"My specific interest for this book was not in every kind of passing, but the passing people perpetrate in order to bypass being excluded unjustly. . . "
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Notice, Passing
The Argus Leader – “Minorities explore how history becomes personal: February fosters discussion, look at future”
"Authors such as Brooke Kroeger and James McBride are cross-referencing their own memories with accepted history to explore topics such as 'passing' . . . "
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Notice, Passing
The Jewish Chronicle (London): “Identity Parades: Writer Elisabeth Luard Describes Her Defiant Removal of her Family Mask”
"Every now and then, a book is published which reveals something so blindingly obvious you can1t imagine why no one has ever pointed it out before. . . . "
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Notice, Passing
The Times of London – “Pale Imitations”
"Although Kroeger broadens her definition of the phenomenon to encompass, for instance, gays pretending to be straight, she still found examples of old-style passing. . . . "
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