There's a novel called Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man which I was supposed to read (in high school?), but I can't really remember any of it so I can't say if it's any good.
I wonder if parts of Goffman's Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity would be helpful in providing a framework for discussing passing. Certainly Goffman is more readable than Foucault....
Does Witness count as a movie about passing? And am I remembering correctly that the IRA fugitive in The Crying Game, when in London, tries to pass himself off as Scottish?
Passing-for-mainstream is a big theme in Jewish culture. For example, a large number of Iberian Jews who converted to Catholicism in order to escape the Inquisition continued to practice Judaism and pass on some Jewish customs, and sometimes the faith itself, to their descendants. But even the Spanish converts who were sincerely Catholic were looked on with suspicion by the majority. On a lighter note, there's a whole subcategory of American Jewish humor regarding Jews who try to pass for Christian and screw it up.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-20 01:47 pm (UTC)There's a novel called Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man which I was supposed to read (in high school?), but I can't really remember any of it so I can't say if it's any good.
I wonder if parts of Goffman's Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity would be helpful in providing a framework for discussing passing. Certainly Goffman is more readable than Foucault....
Does Witness count as a movie about passing? And am I remembering correctly that the IRA fugitive in The Crying Game, when in London, tries to pass himself off as Scottish?
Passing-for-mainstream is a big theme in Jewish culture. For example, a large number of Iberian Jews who converted to Catholicism in order to escape the Inquisition continued to practice Judaism and pass on some Jewish customs, and sometimes the faith itself, to their descendants. But even the Spanish converts who were sincerely Catholic were looked on with suspicion by the majority. On a lighter note, there's a whole subcategory of American Jewish humor regarding Jews who try to pass for Christian and screw it up.