Class 6

1. CLASS 6EWRT 1B

2. Exam 1: Vocab and
Terms
Discussion:
 Hughes: "Who's Passing for
Who?"
 Juda Bennett’s Reading of
Hughes
 Morrison: “Recitatif”
 Comparing works that we
have read.
AGENDA

3. TERMS EXAM 1
You have 20
minutes to
complete the
exam.
Death Penalty 

4. Take ten minutes to discuss
Hughes’s "Who's Passing for
Who?” and Morrison’s
“Recitatif.”
GROUP MEETING

5. Caleb Johnson (social worker)
The “Three dark bohemians” (artists)
The “red-haired man from Iowa” Mr.
Stubblefield
The Iowan Couple (school teachers)
The “brownskin man” and blonde
woman
CHARACTERS: “WHO IS PASSING FOR WHO?”

6. THE ARTISTS AND CALEB’S FRIENDS
IF YOUR QUESTION IS IN THE PRESENTATION, YOU GET
ONE PARTICIPATION POINT.
1. Q: Why is Caleb Johnson so intent on defending Mr.
Stubblefield’s actions by explaining that, “Mr. Stubblefield is
new to Harlem”
2. Why did Caleb feel the urge to apologize to Mr. Stubblefield
[for the confusion caused by the interaction between
Stubblefield, the ostensibly white woman, and her black
husband]?
3. Q. Why did the black artists choose to ignore the color line?
Were they really blind when it came to race?
4. Q: Why does Caleb hang out with white people instead of with
his own race?

7. 1. Q. Why did the woman who was mistaken to be white quickly
forgot about her husband hitting her and turned her anger
towards the man from Iowa?
2. Q: Would the man have stood up for the wife if the couple
had been white instead of black?
3. Q: Why did the red haired man from Iowa and Caleb begin to
act differently after the couple in the restaurant that were
fighting revealed that they were both dark-skinned and not
white?
4. Q: Why did the others questioned Mr. Stubblefield’s motives,
when they themselves took no action to help the woman?
The red-haired man (Mr. Stubblefield) and chivalry

8. 1. Question: Why was race so big to the group once they
found out that the couple actually was white?
2. Does being around your own race really change the
way you behave in public?
3. Q: Is it helpful to entertain these white guests if only
going to ridicule them? Do these interactions
undermine their community’s strength or are they only
creating a sideshow for outsiders to gawk?
The Party

9. 1. Q: Did the couple just pass for fun or to find out if they would be treated
differently?
2. Q: Were the [Iowan] couple really white passing for [black]? Or [black]
passing for white?
3. Q: What did the couple gain by lying and saying that they are African
American when they are actually white?
4. Is passing something that can happen on both sides?
5. Q: What would the couple (who mentioned they were people of color that’s
passing to be white and later on announced they’re actually white people)
gain from their actions?
6. Question: How did the African American writer and painter feel when they
found out that the white people lied about being light skinned African
Americans?
But why?

10. WHO ELSE IS PASSING?

11. If so,
where do
you see
hints of it?
DO YOU READ QUEER
PASSING IN THIS
STORY?

12. Bennett’s Thesis:
“With a sense of the interplay between voyeur
and object, homophobe and homosexual, inside
and outside, “Who's Passing For Who?"
Interweaves the explicit theme of racial
passing” with the buried theme of the closet.
BENNETT, JUDA. “MULTIPLE PASSINGS AND
THE DOUBLE DEATH OF LANGSTON HUGHES.”
HONOLULU: FALL 2000. VOL. 23, ISS. 4;
670-95.

13.  Bennett writes,
[Assertion] The voice of the narrator is the key to
discovering this buried, or closety, theme. Although
critics have been surprisingly silent about the narrator's
various and potential passings, there are several reasons
for reading his character as false or at least layered.
[Evidence] He admits, for example, to at least one
performance when he states that "we dropped our
professionally self-conscious 'Negro' manners... and
kidded freely like colored folks do when there are no white
folks around" (173). [Explanation] Although Langston
Hughes is working within an African American tradition
that has often explored the nature of performance as it
relates to racial difference and insider/outsider
communities, [Analysis] this story further layers that
dynamic with other marks of difference.

14. [Evidence] Before the action begins, the prolix and witty
narrator introduces his friends and himself as "too broad-
minded to be bothered with questions of color." [Explanation]
This statement sets up the dramatic irony that positions the
narrator for his ultimate blunder: being fooled by the white
Iowans. [Analysis] Although the narrator's bohemian world is
meant to stand in contrast to the boring white folks from Iowa,
Hughes eventually reverses the roles. The Iowans prove to be
the tricksters, and the narrator must confront his own naiveté.
That the narrator could not see through the Iowans'
dissimulation is funny, ironic, interesting-but in the end,
not entirely believable.

15. What happens, though, if we read the narrator's bohemian
world as a homosocial world? [Assertion posed as a question]
[Evidence] When we divide the entire cast of characters into
single men and heterosexual couples, we discover that
racial passing only occurs within the heterosexual realm.
Not only does the Iowan couple pass, but so too does the only
other woman, half of the only other heterosexual couple in the
story. [Analysis] We might then see these racial passings as
deflecting attention from the narrator and his friends, who
become boring and unremarkable despite the initial flair with
which they are introduced. [Logical Conclusion] Racial passing
becomes a decoy, distracting our attention from the
performances of the bohemian bachelors.

16. [Assertion] Before Hughes initiates the drama of racial passing, he
comes dangerously close to revealing the "perverse" nature of
the narrator and his bachelor friends:
[Evidence] “You see, Caleb and his white friends, too, were all
bores. Or so we, who lived in Harlem's literary bohemia during the
"Negro Renaissance," thought. We literary ones considered
ourselves too broad-minded to be bothered with questions of color.
We liked people of any race who smoked incessantly, drank liberally,
wore complexion and morality as loose garments, and made fun of
anyone who didn't do likewise. We snubbed and high-hatted any
Negro or white luckless enough not to understand Gertrude Stein
....” (Hughes 170)

17. [Concession]Although the narrator assumes this affected tone,
his dandified attitude and the passing reference to Gertrude
Stein hardly mark him fully and definitively as a homosexual.
[Assertion] Nevertheless, the title, with its bad grammar calling
attention to itself, encourages speculation. Who is passing for
whom? [Explanation/Analysis] Surely the author would have
planted more and trickier trickster figures than the Iowans to fully
justify his title. Furthermore, the narrative has already schooled us
in the surprising fluidity of identity, and so readers are encouraged
to suspect more revelations and exposures.

18. [Concession] To those who would argue that the subject of passing lends
itself to this kind of wild and speculative reading-after all, everything is
performance, and everybody passes-I heartily agree. [Final Assertion] I
am finally arguing that in his autobiographies, poetry, fiction, and
drama, Hughes returned to the subject of passing throughout his
career because he was fascinated with identity as something unstable
and "queer." With their emphasis on compensation rather than loss,
questions rather than answers, the unknown rather than the known,
and curiosity rather than punishment, Hughes's writings on sexual
identity invite comparison to his exploration of racial passing.

19. QHQ Discussion: "Recitatif"
Where do you think the author came up with the idea to name this story
“Recitatif”?

20.  Roberta Fisk
 Twyla
 Big Bozo: Orphanage Worker
 Roberta’s mother:
 Twyla’s mother: Mary
 Maggie: Kitchen worker
 James Benson (Twyla’s
Husband)
 Kenneth Norton (Roberta’s
Husband)
 Chinese Limo Driver
CHARACTERS
• St. Bonny’s
• Howard Johnsons
• Food Emporium
• School Picket Line
• Diner at Christmas
“RECITATIF”
SETTINGS

21. ST. BONNY’S
1. Q: How is reading a story from Twyla’s point of
view still show the struggle of Roberta’s
experience?
2. Q: Why would Twyla say “my mother won’t like
you putting me in here” when Roberta was
assigned as her roommate?
3. Why didn’t Roberta’s mother want to shake
hands with Twyla’s mother?
4. Q: Why is Twyla so obsessed with expressing
her annoyance towards her mother by “killing”
her?

22. RACIAL AMBIGUITY: CLASS DIFFERENCE?
1. Q: Why doesn’t Toni Morrison establish who
is black and who is white between Roberto
and Twyla?
2. Q. Did the racial differences between the two
girls affect their friendship at all?
3. Q: When do we learn to “see” race?
4. What was the bigger conflict, class
difference or racism?

23. REUNIONS
1. Q: Why did Roberta act like she did not know Twyla at
Howard Johnsons?
2. Q: Would Roberta have acted the same way to Twyla if
she wasn’t with the two other guys?
3. Q: Twyla meets Roberta another time while shopping
for groceries. Why is Roberta suddenly more open and
close to Twyla than she was before?
4. Why doesn’t Roberta help Twyla when the crowd rocks
her car?
5. Q: Why was Roberta trying to make Twyla feel
guilty for “kicking” Maggie even though Roberta
knew exactly that they both did nothing to
Maggie?

24. MAGGIE
1. Question: Who is Maggie and why is she constantly repeated
throughout the passage? Why is she so significant to Roberta
and Twyla, and does her character carry a deeper meaning?
2. Q: Why one of the girls thought Maggie was black and
another thought she was white?
3. Q: How did the Maggie situation effect Roberta and Twyla
through their adulthood:
4. Q Why do Roberta and Twyla remember some events of their
childhood differently?
5. Q: Why is Maggie such a big deal in this story?
6. Q: What does Roberta lie to Twyla about having kicked
Maggie? Also, why are the girls so concerned with Maggie’s
race?
.

25. COMPARING WORKS WE HAVE READ
 What does” Morrison’s “Recitatif” have in common with
Hughes’s “Who’s Passing for Who?
 What do they share with other works? How are they different?
 “Passing,” the poem
 “Passing,” the short story
 “Leaves from the Portfolio of an Eurasian”
 Passing, the novel
 Do you have any other insights into “passing” that you have realized
through our readings or discussions.

26.  Read: Kennedy "Racial Passing."
Posted under "Secondary
Sources."
 Post #7: Discuss one story from
Kennedy's article that particularly
speaks to you. How did it influence
you in your thinking about
passing? Include cited textual
evidence.
 Read: “Racial Segregation”
William Pickens and the essay #2
prompt.
 Study: Terms
HOMEWORK