i'm getting ahead of myself now.

[subjective]

hi. please help me make a bibliography about passing & the politics related to it. passing of any sort. fiction, biographies, histories, theory, everything. not just good things, things that suck too. even if you think i've read it, write it down anyway so i can compile a thorough list.

okay thanks.

Comments

[srl.livejournal.com]

off the top of my head:

/Passing/, Nella Larsen, which is one of a genre.
/Black Like Me/, (i forget the author)
/Stone Butch Blues/
Dean Spade's work at www.makezine.org
/Suits Me/, i forget the author, a bio of Billy Tipton
/Gender Outlaw/, Kate Bornstein
/Transgender Warriors/, Leslie Feinberg, doesn't have a lot on the politics of passing that I remember; odd, given how political Feinberg is.
Michel Foucault's book about Herculine Barbin
Renee Richards wrote a biography.

I'm blanking on specific books, but there's a whole genre of critiques of consumer culture--- start with Thorsten Veblen's work on conspicuous consumption--- about how consumerism is a display of class; I think you could argue that lots of US culture is based on passing for a certain class.

(And, now that i think about it, the classic Western transsexual narrative ("I fought overwhelming obstacles to live in this gender, and won") is a descendent of the Horatio Alger American-dream narrative. This isn't directly related to passing, though passing is one of the ways people display that they've "arrived" in their new gender.)

[externaltext.livejournal.com]

i just wrote a paper on passing for a class. good timing!

do you want stuff just on gender? there's a ton out there on race but i don't know if that's what you're looking for.

in addition to srl's recommendations, there's also:
an essay by amy robinson from an issue of the journal critical inquiry. i have it photocopied, i can lend it to you.
some stuff in female masculinity that isn't so hot
some stuff in bodies that matter, specifically on nella larsen and willa cather

i'll think some more and get back to you. i used the halberstam a lot in the paper as a point of departure for critique.

[subjective.livejournal.com]

passing of any sort

no, everything, not just gender! ;)

i need to just purchase a copy of bodies that matter.

[subjective.livejournal.com]

good point.

oh, that tipton biography was horrible! dude. i just read black like me a few weeks ago. nickel & dimed should be on the list too. and danzy senna's caucasia, which was excellent.

i will keep adding as other people do...

[cubanvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

i totally loved Nickel and Dimed!
this is a little off topic, but have you ever read the last time i wore a dress by Daphne Scholinski? i think it would be something of interest to you, it rocked! it also scared me to death later on, looking at the criteria for "gender disorder" which she was committed under... i was like "holy shit, if my dad had known a little more about what he was doing he really could have made good on his threats!!"

[srl.livejournal.com]

a few more:

/Trans-sister Radio/, i forget the author; don't remember much about passing there, but it's worth a read; a novel.
I'm quite sure Dorothy Allison's written something about being obviously "white-trash" and not being able to pass, classwise. It's all over her work.
/Normal/, Amy Bloom, which i haven't read.
/Becoming a Man/, Paul Monette, is all about learning to pass for a higher class via education; also about learning to pass for straight at a private boys' school.

Flannery O'Connor, whose work I don't know well, might have written something that concerns passing in a religious context, having been Catholic in the Protestant South. If you find anything, do let me know :)

Hm, and some of the essays in /Carryin' On in the Lesbian and Gay South/ may also relate; haven't opened that book in a while.

[subjective.livejournal.com]

i had a lot of issues with nickel & dimed, mostly around the methodology. but it's useful for talking about "putting on" class. and i did read the scholinkski book, a few years ago...i should look at it again. i remember being impressed by it. (i'm sure i read somewhere that scholinski changed hir first name, but now i can't find it. hmm.)

[elks.livejournal.com]

for an international perspective- check out seung-kyung kim's "Class Struggle or Family Struggle? Lives of Women Factory Workers in South Korea." she's my prof here at UMD and went undercover in south korea as a factory worker. kinda like "nickeled and dimed" but more depth and without ehrenreich's condescending and sarcastic comments.

-elke

[elks.livejournal.com]

i think it's dylan

[brodycoyote.livejournal.com]

There's always 'Genderqueer: Voices from beyond the sexual binary.' In particular there's "Passing Realities" by Allie Lie, "Twenty Passings"by Stacey Montgomery. "Whose body is this anyway?" by Jacob Hale. "Courage from Necissity" by Mr. Barb Greve. "Not as if you ever felt that way, but..." by Allen James.

There's also "FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society" by Aaron Devor. And while it isn't focused on passing directly (if my memory serves me right) it's a detailed look into the lives of 45 ftm's...which inevitably deals with a certain degree of 'passing'

There's also "Miss Vera's Finishing School for Boys Who Want to be Girls" by Veronica Vera and "Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits" by Loren Cameron.

hmmmmmm if I can think of more I'll let you know.
Brody

[jvb419.livejournal.com]

"Gentleman's Agreement"--the movie, starring Gregory Peck, as well as the book. Like "Nickel and Dimed" this belongs to the sub-genre of passing *downward* (since there's always, by definition, a hierarchy) narratives--a Gentile journalist passes for Jewish in order to document US anti-Semitism. (What, like there weren't any Jewish journalists?) He meets with hostility and exclusion on every hand but boy oh boy, are the guilty parties ever embarrassed when they find out, hey, he wasn't really Jewish at all! Which is why Ring Lardner Jr. said the lesson of the movie was "Don't be nasty to Jews, they might be Gentiles in disguise."

[subjective.livejournal.com]

john, you have mentioned this movie to me before. it is going on my list right now for real. thanks.

[cubanvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

i liked nickel and dimed because it hit a more "main stream" crowd of readers, and so i was happy that these issues were finally getting some exposure. but the book also made me angry because my impression of her was a wealthy writer/columnist from florida who "came down" to my level of existence, and couldn't make ends meet. whereas i work the jobs she described all the time and am not going hungry. i just felt that putting yourself in those job situations for a few weeks or months, but knowing what you can go back home to, really kills the authenticity. there is no earnestness psychologically of "how am i going to eat."
whoa. enough of my rant.

[syndetic.livejournal.com]

I also liked Caucasia a lot. Um, I'm blanking out on titles for you.

Searching my lovely employer's online catalog, I discovered that "Passing (Identity)" is a subject heading. Who knew?

I haven't read any of the books I'm finding, though. Hmm. Should I list them for you anyway?

[subjective.livejournal.com]

if you have time, would you? i'm just trying to make up a big reading list. ahhh, librarian friends. <3

[subjective.livejournal.com]

exactly. and also what elke said below about the sarcastic & condescending comments. a lot of people i've talked to argue for the book appealing to a mainstream liberal middle-to-upper class audience, in ways that other work doesn't, but that just doesn't resonate with me that much. eh.

[bobby-kendall.livejournal.com]

i wrote a paper on nella larsen's passing and jessie fauset's plum bun last spring -- i can get the bibliography off of my school computer for you in a couple days. good luck!

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, I don't have a LJ but I follow some sites (including yours) due to diaryland connections - mine's brownstargrl.diaryland.com.
I'd check Nannygoat/Trannygoat zine by Roisin O'Conner, if you can find it- they included a lot of writing about race and gdenr passing and intersections between. Also check Michelle Cliff's writing, especially No Telephone to Heaven and Free Enterprise. She a light-skinned Jamaican dyke who writes extensively about mestizo stuff and the choices her racially ambiguous fam makes when they immgirate to the States and London. Probably also Aurora Levins Morales in Remedios, Maragartia Alacantra Tan's writng in various Bamboo Girls, and writing in Carol Camper's anthology, Micegination Blues: voices of mixed-race women (Sister Vision Press). Maria Root is a mixed Hawai'ian therapist who's written all these psychological/progessioanl-type writings on mixed-race identity formation, if you want soemthing all psych/soc and legit.

more on passing

[(Anonymous)]

you might also want to look at Lisa Nakamura's work-- she writes about how race is performed in cyberspace, esp. around issues of passing and identity tourism.

[srl.livejournal.com]

Frank Couvares at Amherst, who was at the Homeland Insecurity conference, mentioned the movie Pinky, a passing film which was the subject of a major anti-censorship lawsuit in the 50s. Thought it might be of interest.

[srl.livejournal.com]

It's now Dylan, as another poster pointed out; and I've heard in other contexts that Scholinski is living as a guy.

more on passing

[(Anonymous)]

Hey Tobes,

To add to your bibliography on passing, let me add:

"Passing for White, Passing for Black" by Adrienne Piper (which is an excellent essay, and I can get you the full citation when I unpack my books again -- moving soon so everything's in boxes)

Someone mentioned Pinky which is indeed a 1950s film about an African-American nurse who passes in order to work in a white hospital. Strangely enough there are several films dealing with similar subject matter in this time period. One whose name is escaping me at the moment is about a black doctor who passes as white in order to work in a white hospital and is based on a true story. Argh, I wish I could remember the name! I'll write you again when I do. It has this amazing scene when the passing doctor and a white nurse have this intense standoff because the doctor won't segregate blood donations by race, and rather than accept this, the nurse drops the bottle of blood that can from an African-American on the floor and breaks it.

Brainflash -- the film is called "Lost Boundaries." What a great title!

You could devote an entire section of the course to filmic representations of passing since it seems there are so many -- those mentioned above, The Crying Game, Boys Don't Cry, etc, etc

Also I agree that I thought that the Diane Middlebrook biography of Billy Tipton was EXTREMELY problematic, but that wouldn't preclude it being a useful addition to a course, especially if you paired it with something like "Stone Butch Blues" or another autobiography written by someone who did/was pass(ing).

One last thing: can I take this course when you teach it?

xoxoxo,
Abby