Sinead Moynihan - Passing into the present

Contemporary American and Canadian Writers

Series editors:
Nahem Yousaf and Sharon Monteith

Paul Auster Mark Brown

Douglas Coupland Andrew Tate

Philip Roth David Brauner

Contemporary American fiction of racial and gender passing

Copyright Sinad Moynihan 2010

The right of Sinad Moynihan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7190 8229 0

First published 2010

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Printed in Great Britain
by MPG Books Group, UK

This innovative series reflects the breadth and diversity of writing over the last thirty years, and provides critical evaluations of established, emerging and critically neglected writers mixing the canonical with the unexpected. It explores notions of the contemporary and analyses current and developing modes of representation with a focus on individual writers and their work. The series seeks to reflect both the growing body of academic research in the field, and the increasing prevalence of contemporary American and Canadian fiction on programmes of study in institutions of higher education around the world. Central to the series is a concern that each book should argue a stimulating thesis, rather than provide an introductory survey, and that each contemporary writer will be examined across the trajectory of their literary production. A variety of critical tools and literary and interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged to illuminate the ways in which a particular writer contributes to, and helps readers rethink, the North American literary and cultural landscape in a global context.

Central to debates about the field of contemporary fiction is its role in interrogating ideas of national exceptionalism and transnationalism. This series matches the multivocality of contemporary writing with wide-ranging and detailed analysis. Contributors examine the drama of the nation from the perspectives of writers who are members of established and new immigrant groups, writers who consider themselves on the nations margins as well as those who chronicle middle America. National labels are the subject of vociferous debate and including American and Canadian writers in the same series is not to flatten the differences between them but to acknowledge that literary traditions and tensions are cross-cultural and that North American writers often explore and expose precisely these tensions. The series recognises that situating a writer in a cultural context involves a multiplicity of influences, social and geo-political, artistic and theoretical, and that contemporary fiction defies easy categorisation. For example, it examines writers who invigorate the genres in which they have made their mark alongside writers whose aesthetic goal is to subvert the idea of genre altogether. The challenge of defining the roles of writers and assessing their reception by reading communities is central to the aims of the series.

Overall, Contemporary American and Canadian Writers aims to begin to represent something of the diversity of contemporary writing and seeks to engage students and scholars in stimulating debates about the contemporary and about fiction.

Nahem Yousaf
Sharon Monteith

This book evolved from a PhD project that I undertook in the School of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham from 2003 to 2006. As such, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the academic and administrative staff there, as well as to my postgraduate peers. I would like to thank Sharon Monteith and Celeste-Marie Bernier, who co-supervised the project, and Sharon, in particular, for going above and beyond the call of duty to see it through to final publication. For their input and advice, I am grateful to Dave Murray at Nottingham and Helen Taylor at the University of Exeter. Stimulating discussions with academic friends Susan Billingham, Joanne Hall, Lee Jenkins, Ruth Maxey, Catherine Mills and Simon Turner were also invaluable.

For financial support during the writing of this work, I am grateful to the National University of Ireland and the Leverhulme Trust for providing doctoral and post-doctoral funding respectively. The British Association for American Studies and the Graduate School at the University of Nottingham also awarded additional funding which facilitated research trips to the United States.

Portions of originally appeared, respectively, in Engaging Tradition, Making It New: Essays on Teaching Recent African American Literature, ed. va Tettenborn and Stephanie Brown (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008) and Mother Tongue Theologies, ed. Darren J.N. Middleton (Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2009). I am grateful to the publishers for granting permission to reproduce this material here.

Acknowledgement is also due for the use of the following extracts: Tracks (1988) and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001) by Louise Erdrich HarperCollins Publishers Ltd; From Caucasia with Love by Danzy Senna (2001) Bloomsbury Publishing; The Human Stain by Philip Roth (2000) published by Jonathan Cape, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group. Some material has previously been published in the chapter Native-Christian Syncretism in two Louise Erdrich novels, and is used by permission of Wipf and Stock publishers, www.wipfandstock.com .

Thanks, finally, to my family and friends in Ireland, Britain and the USA for supporting me throughout the process of researching and writing this book. Mle buochas.

Bette: I would never define myself exclusively as being white any more than I would define myself exclusively as being black. I mean, really, why is it so wrong for me to move more freely in the world just because my appearance doesnt automatically announce who I am?