Passing

Passing is a novel by the American writer Nella Larsen, published in 1929 and set in Harlem and Chicago in the 1920s.

Irene Redfield is a woman with a comfortable life and a habit of managing her own feelings, and the novel is told from inside her head. Clare Kendry was a poor relation when they were girls, and she has since married a wealthy white man who does not know that she is black; she passes, and she does it completely. When Clare begins appearing at Irene's parties and insinuating herself into Irene's life, Irene's unease takes a shape she will not admit to. The book is about the way race works as a series of daily decisions and about what those decisions cost the people who make them, and it is also about a woman who cannot stop looking at what another woman has chosen. Larsen was herself of mixed heritage, and the novel's surface of social comedy is thin over a great deal of damage.

It is one of two novels Larsen wrote, and it ends without telling the reader everything it has been building towards.