Rollins College Rollins Scholarship Online English Honors in the Major Theses Spring 2016 Passing in American Culture Joy E. Sandon Rollins College,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.rollins.edu/honors-in-the-major-english Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, and the Race, Ethnicity and Post- Colonial Studies Commons Recommended Citation Sandon, Joy E., "Passing in American Culture" (2016). English. 1. https://scholarship.rollins.edu/honors-in-the-major-english/1 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors in the Major Theses at Rollins Scholarship Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in English by an authorized administrator of Rollins Scholarship Online. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Passing in American Culture: Biracial, Queer, and Disabled Bodies Joy Sandon Submitted to faculty of the Rollins College English Department in partial fulfillment of the requirement for honors in the English major in the Hamilton Holt School Rollins College May 2016 To mom and dad, Thanks for always believing in me even when I was crying at 3am because I thought I couldn’t do it. Without you, I truly couldn’t have. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One 14 Chapter Two 35 Chapter Three 55 Conclusion 76 Bibliography 80 Sandon 1 Introduction When we think of passing, race is usually the first thing that comes to mind. Whether it’s James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson, or general thoughts of the Harlem Renaissance, The Civil Rights Era, and contemporary struggles that people of color face, race is typically at the center of perceptions of passing.