Passing Flashcards

(20 cards)

1
Q

Biographical context

A
  • New Negro
    -Nella moved to Harlem
  • Nella duel heritage- worked as a nurse
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2
Q

Harlem Renaissance

A
  • intellectual and cultural revival of African American movement- New negro movement
    Great Migration of African American workers fleeing the racist conditions of the Jim Crow Deep South
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3
Q

Historical context

A
  • Rhinelander Case
    -One drop rule
    -Great Migration
    -Curse of Ham- justification of slavery
    -plessy vs ferguson- seperate but equal
    -Stream of consciouness
    -Transatlantic Slave Trade
  • Tragic mulatto-doomed tragic mixed-race character
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4
Q

Clare quotes

A

-Stepping always on the edge of danger’
-an ivory mask
-Clare Kendry cared nothing for the race. She only belonged to it’
‘Death by misadventure’
‘i used almost to hate all of you. You had all the things i wanted and never had had.
‘Moneys awfully nice to have’
Everything I want. I could kill him. I expect I shall, some day
I want to see Negroes, to be with them again

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5
Q

Irene quotes

A

’ Race.. the thing that bound and suffocated her.. she wished that she had not been born Negro’
‘We mothers are all responsibke for the security and happiness of our children’
‘What if Bellew shall divorce Clare. Could he. There was the Rhinelander Case’
‘weary and depressed’
‘She gave in’
Dont be a fool Clare.. unpleasantness and possible danger’

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6
Q

Brian quotes

A

’ Brian was unhappy restless, withdrawn.. aching to go somewhere else’
‘If they’ve got to live in this damned country, they better find out what they’re up against’
‘forever wanting something he couldn’t have’

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7
Q

John Bellew

A

I hate them… the black scrimy devils’
‘tallish person, broadly made… an impression of latent physical power’

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8
Q

Literary context

A

Unreliable narrator
The frame novel-a story within a story
- Epigraph- Countee Cullen
Du Bois- the struggle to remain true to black culture whilst also conforming to dominant white society

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9
Q

Social context

A

Brazil- absence of colour bar- multi-racial society
James Baldwin- ‘ You cannot lynch me and keep me in ghettos without becoming something monstrous yourself

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10
Q

‘It is a tragic story rooted in inescapable facts of American life, that whiteness conferred an almost universal unearned advantage’

A

Bernstein

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11
Q

Paradoxically, Irene is both attracted to and appalled by Clares desire to live on the edge

A

Scruggs

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12
Q

The emotionally complex female characters in the novel keenly feel the oppressive nature of living in a white male-dominated society

A

Christianson

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13
Q

Clare’s attempt to live free is defeated by the way others view her

A

Hutchinson

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14
Q

Existing within both white and patriarchal power systems, Black women are forced to face oppression on two fronts: for their Blackness and their womanhood

A

Lorde

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15
Q

Curse of Ham

A

Justification for slavery and discrimination- Ham did something bad against someone and was punished for it by God

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16
Q

W.E.B Du Bois

A

Double consciousness- perception of identity that African Amercans posessed because of their conflicting societal roles as Americans and as black people - perception of the characters, conscious of yourself but conscious of how other people (white people) think of them

17
Q

Du Bois double consciouness

A

‘sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others’- black perception of identity

18
Q

Countee Cullen Epigraph

A

‘Heritage’- 1925- introduces themes of racial identity and personal agency- the speaker asserts a refusal to view black identity as tragic and it echoes the idealised version of the New Negro. It also foreshadows the emotional and pyschological unraveling the results from living within the constraints of race and gender in a racially stratified society

19
Q

One drop rule

A

Legal principle of racial classification- asserted that any person with even 1 ancestor of African ancestry is considered black

20
Q

Constructing characters

A
  • microcosm of a group
    -represent a larger idea
    -provide a kens
    -provide contrast