Table of Contents:
  • Fixing the color line: the mulatta, American courts, and the racial imaginary.
  • "White slaves" and tragic mulattas: the antislavery appeals of Ellen Craft and Sarah Parker Remond.
  • Little romances and mulatta heroines: passing for a "true woman" in Frances Harper's Iola Leroy and Pauline Hopkins's Contending forces.
  • Commodified "blackness" and performance possibilities in Jessie Fauset's The chinaberry tree and Nella Larsen's Quicksand.
  • Passing transgressions, excess, and authentic identity in Jessie Fauset's Plum bun and Nella Larsen's Passing.
  • Epilogue: The "passing out" of Passing and the mulatta?