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A Chosen Exile : A History of Racial Passing in American Life by Allyson Vanessa Hobbs; American Council of Learned Societies is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is A Chosen Exile : A History of Racial Passing in American Life about?

Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and the leap into another. This revelatory history of passing explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions. It also tells a tale of loss. As racial relations in America have evolved so has the significance of passing. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. After emancipation, many African Americans came to regard passing as a form of betrayal, a selling of one's birthright. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on one's own. Although black Americans who adopted white identities reaped benefits of expanded opportunity and mobility, Hobbs helps us to recognize and understand the grief, loneliness, and isolation that accompanied-and often outweighed-these rewards. By the dawning of the civil rights era, more an

Who reads A Chosen Exile : A History of Racial Passing in American Life?

Author

Allyson Vanessa Hobbs; American Council of Learned Societies

Publisher

Harvard University, Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies

Published

2016

Language

EN

ISBN

9780674735811

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Science, History, Sociology

Rating

3.87 / 5 (26 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14