University of North Carolina Press That Middle World: Race, Performance, and the Politics of Passing

In this study of racial passing literature, Julia S. Charles highlights how mixed-race subjects invent cultural spaces for themselves - a place she terms that middle world - and how they, through various performance strategies, make meaning in the interstices between the Black and white worlds. Focusing on the construction and performance of racial identity in works by writers from the antebellum period through Reconstruction, Charles creates a new discourse around racial passing to analyze mixed-race characters' social objectives when crossing into other racialized spaces. To illustrate how this middle world and its attendant performativity still resonates in the present day, Charles connects contemporary figures, television, and film - including Rachel Dole&382;al and her black-passing controversy, the FX show Atlanta, and the musical Show Boat - to a range of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literary texts. Charles's work offers a nuanced approach to African American passing literature and examines how mixed-race performers articulated their sense of selfhood and communal belonging. Review Charles has presented a fascinating new take on the phenomenon of racial passing during a particular moment in U.S. history. This book is a must-read for anyone studying the politics of race in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. - The Journal of Southern History About the Author Julia S. Charles is assistant professor of English at Auburn University.