Discussion: Hughes: "Who's Passing for Who?"

Juda Bennett’s Reading of Hughes

Morrison: “Recitatif”

Comparing works that we have read.

Take ten minutes to discuss Hughes’s "Who's Passing for Who?” and Morrison’s “Recitatif.”

Caleb Johnson (social worker)

The “Three dark bohemians” (artists)

The “red-haired man from Iowa” Mr. Stubblefield

The Iowan Couple (school teachers)

The “brownskin man” and blonde woman

1. Q: Why is Caleb Johnson so intent on defending Mr. Stubblefield’s actions by explaining that, “Mr. Stubblefield is new to Harlem”

2. Q. Why did the black artists choose to ignore the color line? Were they really blind when it came to race?

3. Q: Why does Caleb hang out with white people instead of with his own race?

4. Q: Why does Caleb feel the need to impress his “friends”?

5. What was the couple’s and red-headed man’s real purpose of visiting Harlem?

Q: Why did the white man stop helping the blonde lady?

Q: Why didn’t Mr. Stubblefield feel the need to defend her just because she was a woman being mistreated by her husband? Did the color of her skin make her unworthy of defense?

Q: Why did the African American woman, who was beaten up by her husband, became so defensive for her husband?

Q: Is the red-headed man passing as a gentlemen?

Q: If the situation looked the other way around, a white man beating a black woman, would the red haired man still interfere?

Q: Why did the others questioned Mr. Stubblefield’s motives, when they themselves took no action to help the woman?

The red-haired man (Mr. Stubblefield) and chivalry

Q: Why did Caleb and his friends start to act differently with the couple when they found out that they were [black] and passing?

Does being around your own race really change the way you behave in public?

Q: Is it helpful to entertain these white guests if only going to ridicule them? Do these interactions undermine their community’s strength or are they only creating a sideshow for outsiders to gawk?

The Party

• Q: Why did the couple decide to fool Caleb and his [black] friends after the incident Mr. Stubblefield had?

• Q: Were the [Iowan] couple really white passing for [black]? Or [black] passing for white?

• Q: What is the purpose of the woman telling them in the end that they were really white passing as African American? Was she mocking them?

• Q: What’s the real point of this short story?

But why?

If so, where do you see hints of it?

Bennett’s Thesis: “With a sense of the interplay between voyeur

and object, homophobe and homosexual, inside and outside, “Who's Passing For Who?" Interweaves the explicit theme of racial

passing” with the buried theme of the closet.

Bennett writes,

[Assertion] The voice of the narrator is the key to discovering

this buried, or closety, theme. Although critics have been

surprisingly silent about the narrator's various and potential passings,

there are several reasons for reading his character as false or at least

layered. [Evidence] He admits, for example, to at least one

performance when he states that "we dropped our professionally self-

conscious 'Negro' manners... and kidded freely like colored folks do

when there are no white folks around" (173). [Explanation]

Although Langston Hughes is working within an African American

tradition that has often explored the nature of performance as it

relates to racial difference and insider/outsider communities,

[Analysis] this story further layers that dynamic with other marks of

difference.

[Evidence] Before the action begins, the prolix and witty

narrator introduces his friends and himself as "too broad-

minded to be bothered with questions of color." [Explanation]

This statement sets up the dramatic irony that positions the

narrator for his ultimate blunder: being fooled by the white

Iowans. [Analysis] Although the narrator's bohemian world is

meant to stand in contrast to the boring white folks from Iowa,

Hughes eventually reverses the roles. The Iowans prove to be

the tricksters, and the narrator must confront his own naiveté.

That the narrator could not see through the Iowans'

dissimulation is funny, ironic, interesting-but in the end,

not entirely believable.

What happens, though, if we read the narrator's bohemian

world as a homosocial world? [Assertion posed as a question]

When we divide the entire cast of characters into single

men and heterosexual couples, we discover that racial

passing only occurs within the heterosexual realm. Not only

does the Iowan couple pass, but so too does the only other

woman, half of the only other heterosexual couple in the story.

[Analysis] We might then see these racial passings as deflecting

attention from the narrator and his friends, who become boring

and unremarkable despite the initial flair with which they are

introduced. [Logical Conclusion] Racial passing becomes a

decoy, distracting our attention from the performances of the

bohemian bachelors.

[Assertion] Before Hughes initiates the drama of racial passing, he

comes dangerously close to revealing the "perverse" nature of

the narrator and his bachelor friends:

[Evidence] “You see, Caleb and his white friends, too, were all

bores. Or so we, who lived in Harlem's literary bohemia during the

"Negro Renaissance," thought. We literary ones considered

ourselves too broad-minded to be bothered with questions of color.

We liked people of any race who smoked incessantly, drank liberally,

wore complexion and morality as loose garments, and made fun of

anyone who didn't do likewise. We snubbed and high-hatted any

Negro or white luckless enough not to understand Gertrude Stein

....” (Hughes 170)

[Concession]Although the narrator assumes this affected tone,

his dandified attitude and the passing reference to Gertrude

Stein hardly mark him fully and definitively as a homosexual.

[Assertion] Nevertheless, the title, with its bad grammar calling

attention to itself, encourages speculation. Who is passing for

whom? [Explanation/Analysis] Surely the author would have

planted more and trickier trickster figures than the Iowans to fully

justify his title. Furthermore, the narrative has already schooled us

in the surprising fluidity of identity, and so readers are encouraged

to suspect more revelations and exposures.

[Concession] To those who would argue that the subject of passing lends

itself to this kind of wild and speculative reading-after all, everything is

performance, and everybody passes-I heartily agree. [Final Assertion] I

am finally arguing that in his autobiographies, poetry, fiction, and

drama, Hughes returned to the subject of passing throughout his

career because he was fascinated with identity as something unstable

and "queer." With their emphasis on compensation rather than loss,

questions rather than answers, the unknown rather than the known,

and curiosity rather than punishment, Hughes's writings on sexual

identity invite comparison to his exploration of racial passing.

Where do you think the author came up with the idea to name this story “Recitatif”?

Roberta Fisk

Twyla

Big Bozo: Orphanage Worker

Roberta’s mother:

Twyla’s mother: Mary

Maggie: Kitchen worker

James Benson (Twyla’s Husband)

Kenneth Norton (Roberta’s Husband)

Chinese Limo Driver

• St. Bonny’s• Howard Johnsons• Food Emporium• School Picket Line• Diner at Christmas

1. Q: Why would Twyla say “my mother won’t like you putting me in here” when Roberta was assigned as her roommate?

2. Q: What does Twyla mean when she says that her mother “danced all night”?

3. Q: Why did Twyla kept on referring to the other children at the shelter as the “real Orphans”? Why wasn’t she a real Orphan?

4. Why didn’t Roberta’s mother want to shake hands with Twyla’s mother?

1. Q: Why didn’t Morrison tell us their race? Would it have a different approach to us readers?

2. Q. Did the racial differences between the two girls affect their friendship at all?

3. Q: Is Roberta racist towards blacks? 4. Q: When do we learn to “see” race?5. What was the bigger conflict, class difference

or racism?

1. Q: Why did Roberta act like she did not know Twyla at Howard Johnsons?

2. Q: Would Roberta have acted the same way to Twyla if she wasn’t with the two other guys?

3. Q: Twyla meets Roberta another time while shopping for groceries. Why is Roberta suddenly more open and close to Twyla than she was before?

4. Why doesn’t Roberta help Twyla when the crowd rocks her car?

5. Q: Why do Twyla and Roberta have a complicated relationship?

1. Q: What is Maggie’s role in the story?

2. Q: What purpose does the incident with Maggie serve in the story?

3. Q: Why did Roberta make up the lie that both her and Twyla kicked Maggie?

4. Q: Twyla didn’t seem willing to accept Maggie as black when Roberta had told her she was, was Twyla also wanting to kick Maggie when the other girls did? Or was Roberta the only one of the two who wanted to join in?

5. Q: What race was Maggie?

6. Q. Was Maggie a metaphor for something?

What does” Morrison’s “Recitatif” have in common with Hughes’s “Who’s Passing for Who?

What do they share with other works? How are they different? “Passing,” the poem

“Passing,” the short story

“Leaves from the Portfolio of an Eurasian”

Passing, the novel

Do you have any other insights into “passing” that you have realized through our readings or discussions.

Read: Kennedy "Racial Passing." Posted under "Secondary Sources."

Post #8: Discuss one story from Kennedy's article that particularly speaks to you. How did it influence you in your thinking about passing? Include cited textual evidence.

Read: “Racial Segregation” William Pickens and the essay #2 prompt.

Study: Terms