Author

Publication

2014 - Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

Language

English

Word Count

95,500 words, Guess

Page Count

382 pages

Physical Format

Hardcover

Identifiers

and 2 more
  • Better World Books9780674368101
  • Open LibraryOL25724280M

Classifications

  • LCCE185.625 .H63 2014
  • LCCE185.625 .H63 2014eb
  • LCCE185.625.H63 2014

Description

Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, 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. - Publisher.

Description

t 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.

Subjects

Other Editions

  • A Chosen Exile: a history of racial passing in American lifeHardcoverHarvard University Press2014-01-01

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