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Title:
A chosen exile : a history of racial passing in American life / Allyson Hobbs.
Author:
Hobbs, Allyson Vanessa.
Publication Information:
Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2014.
Call Number:
E185.625 .H63 2014
Abstract:
It was a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and the leap into another. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on one's own. Hobbs explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions. It is also a tale of grief, loneliness, and isolation that often accompanied the rewards.
ISBN:
9780674368101
Physical Description:
382 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Contents:
To live a life elsewhere -- White is the color of freedom -- Waiting on a white man's chance -- Lost kin -- Searching for a new soul in Harlem -- Coming home -- On identity.
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