Photo: Strategist When I read a book, I always find myself wondering what books the author was reading while they wrote. I’ve long imagined, for instance, that Alice Walker thought fondly of Zora Neale Hurston while writing The Color Purple, or Nicole Dennis-Benn called on Toni Morrison while crafting Here Comes the Sun.
A Chosen Exile by Allyson Hobbs $15 $18 now 17% off $15 Bennett said that this nonfiction title by Allyson Hobbs, which chronicles the history of African Americans passing as white in the United States, reframed her idea of passing altogether. “It’s just a really fascinating historical text,” says Bennett. “When we think about passing, we think about what characters stand to gain from doing so, and we don’t often ask ourselves what they stand to lose.
$12 at Amazon Buy $16 at Bookshop Buy Passing by Nella Larsen $13 $14 now 7% off $13 Passing by Nella Larsen is about a pair of childhood friends — one who passes at will and one who passes full-time. It tackles themes and ideas similar to the ones covered in The Vanishing Half — like why pass, and what does one gain? While I read The Vanishing Half, I thought of Passing often, and found myself considering where the two met and diverged.
$14 at Amazon Buy $15 at Bookshop Buy Negroland by Margo Jefferson $13 $16 now 19% off $13 Bennett also read Margo Jefferson’s Negroland, a nonfiction book that delves into the Black elite and their various customs and ideologies. I, too, have read Negroland, and found myself thinking of it while reading The Vanishing Half. In Negroland, whiteness is a tool of upward mobility; in The Vanishing Half lightness is presented as a means to an end.
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