Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) is an insightful piece of literature on racial tension, colorism, and intracommunity struggles. But just beneath the surface, it can just as easily be read as a story about queer desire. Reading between the lines, protagonist Irene, and several other characters, may indeed be passing–not for white, but for straight.
It is obvious to interpret Irene’s discomfort in her encounter with Clare to be about her being “found out” as a black woman, but there is more to it than that. Irene is not only intrigued by Clare because she subconsciously recognizes her, she is also clearly attracted to her.
Very slowly she looked around, and into the dark eyes of the woman in the green frock at the next table. But she evidently failed to realize that such intense interest as she was showing might be embarrassing, and continued to stare. (Larsen, 17)
Irene is both confused and enthralled in this scene. She does not know where she knows Clare from yet, but she also does not understand why she is so compelled toward her. Given the way their relationship evolves and their lives become inextricably linked, it is fair to assume that there may be a level of romantic or sexual attraction between them, or at least on Irene’s part.
Another piece of literature from the Harlem Renaissance, the short story “Smoke, Lillies and Jade” (1926) by Richard Bruce Nugent, also features an encounter bursting with queer desire. Though the protagonist Alex and his love interest Beauty have a more obvious sexual and romantic connection than Irene and Clare, there is still more implication than explicit disclosure of queerness.
the castanets of their heels clicking accompaniment…the stranger inhaled deeply and with a nod of content and a smile…Alex blew a cloud of smoke…Alex felt like singing…the stranger knew the magic of blue smoke also (Nugent, 36)
Daveed Diggs performs a reading from “Smoke, Lillies and Jade”
In this encounter, we find a more obvious instance of attraction, but a similar level of discreteness. Both encounters use metaphors and symbolism to express the desires of their protagonists, and express feelings that were much more taboo then than they are today. In his 2015 article “Desires Made Manifest: The Queer Modernism of Wallace Thurman’s Fire!!” Matthew N. Hannah explores the queer themes found in literature of the Harlem Renaissance.
Nugent reconfigured hetero-normative literary tropes into explorations of queer, interracial desire; moreover, this reconceptualization questions the boundaries and possibilities of art. Rather than relying on art to idealize normative sexuality’s role in reproducing the race, Nugent celebrated the pleasures of same-sex desire with a catalogue of his beloved. In keeping with the purported aims of Fire!!, Nugent imagined an alternative to the propagandistic art idealizing the struggle for racial uplift. (Hannah, 174-175)
What fascinates me about both of these examples of literature is the way the two writers so thoughtfully and tenderly incorporated queer narratives into the larger collection of literature produced during the Harlem Renaissance. During the Harlem Renaissance, the struggle for rights and respect for Black Americans, then often called “The Race Problem”, was far from over, and top of mind for everyone. Yet Larsen and Nugent were still able to weave queer ideas into their work and to place the Black Queer struggle into context within the Black struggle. This is particularly important to acknowledge because even today, there are many who seek to separate Queer issues from Black issues, when in reality both have always existed in spite of each other. In “Smoke Lillies and Jade”, Alex’s difficulty in finding his identity is clearly not just due to his blackness, as the success of his brother is pointed out, but also due to his queerness. In “Passing”, Larsen brilliantly places Queer Identity alongside Black identity, perhaps evene equating them. For these characters their Blackness and Queerness are inexplicable, challenging long held myths about how people should identify.