"This volume seeks to theorize and explore the concept of "neo-passing," or the proliferation of passing in the post-Jim Crow moment. Why--in our "color-blind" or "post-racial" moment--is passing still of such literary and cultural interest? To answer this question, chapters in this book focus on a range of passing practices, performances and texts that are part of the emerging genre of what we call neo-passing narratives. Neo-passing narratives are contemporary narratives that depict someone being takenfor an identity other than what s/he is considered really to be. That these texts are written, constructed, or produced at a time when passing should have passed reveals that the questions passing raises--questions about how identity is performed and contested in relation to social norms--are just as relevant now as they were at the turn of the twentieth century"--
African Americans once passed as whites to escape the pains of racism. Today's neo-passing has pushed the old idea of passing in extraordinary new directions. A white author uses an Asian pen name; heterosexuals live "out" as gay; and, irony of ironies, whites try to pass as black. Mollie Godfrey and Vershawn Ashanti Young present essays that explore practices, performances, and texts of neo-passing in our supposedly postracial moment. The authors move from the postracial imagery of Angry Black White Boy and the issues of sexual orientation and race in ZZ Packer's short fiction to the politics of Dave Chappelle's skits as a black President George W. Bush. Together, the works reveal that the questions raised by neo-passingquestions about performing and contesting identity in relation to social normsremain as relevant today as in the past. Contributors: Derek Adams, Christopher M. Brown, Martha J. Cutter, Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Michele Elam, Alisha Gaines, Jennifer Glaser, Allyson Hobbs, Brandon J. Manning, Loran Marsan, Lara Narcisi, Eden Osucha, Gayle Wald, and Deborah Elizabeth Whaley