Emily Bernard (American literature scholar and author) dives into Passing, the Rebecca Hall (Netflix) film based on the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, and talks about how the characters Clare Kendry’s and Irene Redfield’s struggles for identity and belonging mirror tensions about race, class, and sex that continue today. Passing, starring Ruth Negga (Clare) and Tessa Thompson (Irene), takes place in 1920s New York City where a Black woman finds her world upended when she reconnects by chance with a childhood friend who's passing as white.

Emily Bernard wrote the introduction for the 2018 Penguin Books release of Nella Larsen's Passing. Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Emily Bernard is the Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont in Burlington. Her first book, Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her most recent book, Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine, won the 2020 LA Times Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose.

Passing is available on Netflix (with a subscription)

Emily Bernard's website

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