Communications in Humanities Research
- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences
Communications in Humanities Research
Vol. 3, 17 May 2023
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Ethnic and Personal Passing in the Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man
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Abstract
Passing has multiple meanings in African American literature, especially in the area of personal identity in distinct races. In The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, James Weldon Johnson describes many aspects of passing, which mainly focus on suspicious of their individual identity and inquisitiveness between two races. Among the series of “passing,” James Weldon Johnson lay emphasis on the ethnic passing, which refers to the particular way that both black and white people used to cross the border of racial segregation, which could help them overcome the difficulties or comprehend the other races. It could be physical, emotional, or even cognitive. On the other hand, Johnson also depicts the characters’ identities passing both from black to white and white to black. This paper analyzed The autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, trying to find out the series of “passing” and their indicated meanings, which may have repercussions for how future scholars interpret this literature.
Keywords
African American, Cultural Recognition, James Weldon Johnson, Passing, Races, Double Consciousness
References
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Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
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- Volume Title
- Proceedings of the International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies (ICIHCS 2022), Part 1
- ISBN (Print)
- 978-1-915371-29-4
- ISBN (Online)
- 978-1-915371-30-0
- Published Date
- 17 May 2023
- Series
- Communications in Humanities Research
- ISSN (Print)
- 2753-7064
- ISSN (Online)
- 2753-7072
- DOI
- 10.54254/2753-7064/3/20220201
- Copyright
- 17 May 2023
- Open Access
- This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited