PASSING AS JEWISH: THE MATERIAL CONSEQUENCES OF RACE AND THE PROPERTY OF WHITENESS IN LATE TWENTIETH-CENTURY PASSING NOVELS

This thesis discusses passing and performing as Jewish in Mona in the Promised Land by Gish Jen, Caucasia by Danzy Senna, and The Human Stain by Philip Roth. In the introduction, I provide historical background on the development of the concept of race, Jewish American assimilation, and racial passing. In Chapter 1, I demonstrate that in Mona in the Promised Land, Gish Jen uses an intentionally asymmetrical juxtaposition between Jewish and Asian Americans and African Americans to argue that racial assimilation relies on the acquisition of whiteness. In Chapter 2, I discuss how Senna shows the development of American multiracialism as it relates to Jewish identity, and demonstrates the role of Jewish identity in constructions of race, ethnicity, and identity in Caucasia. In Chapter 3, I show that the protagonist’s passing narrative in The Human Stain mirrors the path of the American Jew across the color line during the twentieth century, and that Roth uses the protagonist’s ambiguous racial identity to show that it is impossible to escape societal labels and affiliations. In the conclusion, I provide a brief comparative analysis of how and why each text appropriates Jewishness. Ultimately, this thesis examines how other ethnoracial groups have interacted with Jewish Americans and how ethnic identity formations and designations are both complicated and dismantled by Jewishness. I conclude that contemporary representations of Jewish identity in passing narratives reclaim the power of Jewish identity to disrupt and dismantle the ideology of racial essentialism.

Grantor dc:publisher

Wake Forest University

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Mullis, Courtney James

• African American

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/82168

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:wakespace.lib.wfu.edu:10339/82168