Ep. 2 - “Passing”
Clare (Ruth Negga) and Irene (Tessa Thompson) in Passing, a film by Rebecca Hall adapted from the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen. Available on Netflix
Emily Bernard (American literature scholar and author) dives into Passing, the Rebecca Hall (Netflix) film based on the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, and talks about how the characters Clare Kendra’s and Irene Redfield’s struggles for identity and belonging mirror tensions about race, class, and sex that continue today.
Passing by Nella Larsen was published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1929. Emily Bernard wrote the introduction and further reading for the Penguin Books release in 2018. Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Emily Bernard is the Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont in Burlington. Her first book, Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her most recent book, Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine, won the 2020 LA Times Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose.
Recorded November 19, 2021
More on Emily Bernard: Website
Passing, a film by Rebecca Hall featuring Ruth Negga (as Clare Kendra), Tessa Thompson (Irene Redfield), Alexander Skarsgård (John Bellew), Andre Holland (Brian Redfield), Bill Camp (Hugh Wentworth), Antoinette Crow (Felise). Clare and Irene, two women who knew each other as girls reconnect by chance. Both are fair skinned Black women who can pass for white but make very different life choices. Irene marries a Black man who is a doctor and raises her children in the Black community. Clare, on the other hand, lives her life as a white woman and is married to a white man and international banking agent who admits his hatred for Black people but doesn’t know his wife is Black. After their chance meeting, Clare and Irene forge a complicated relationship with each other that reveals the tensions between their choices and their families.
Available on Netflix (with subscription)
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