A review by elliottzink
A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life by Allyson Hobbs

4.0

This is an altogether 'new' topic for a historical narrative and though comparatively short does the subject matter justice. I am glad that Dobbs kept herself controlled in organizing her book so as to be ranging enough to emerge as a possible direction for study in the future, and yet not going so far as to become merely a name dropping text. In the early chapters Dobbs does some really very excellent analysis of texts: their context and reception, but the latter portions of the work feels incomplete. Namely more could have been covered for the Harlem Renaissance, and I thought that the epilogue was weak. That being said her section on Jean Toomer in this portion was top notch, and it outshone much of everything else in the chapter. There were also some difficult sentences I thought which could have used some polishing, but considering the information she provides I don't feel that they were detrimental to the overall text.