Sexual Traumas and Identity Formation in "Passing" and "Kindred"

Obligatorisk kvalifiseringsoppgave i ENG4373 – Multicultural American Literature, vår 2012. 

Both in Nella Larsen’s Passing and Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred – albeit in very different ways – an historical, asymmetrical cross-racial sexual union is an indispensable basic factor for their respective narrative developments: In Passing, a core theme, the possibility of being able to “pass” from being considered black to being considered white, hinges on a sufficient dilution of visible outward signs of blackness; in Kindred, the inception of the hereditary line of the main protagonist depends on a sexual relation between a white slave owner and a black slave – a relation she is transported through time to make sure comes about, whereby to save herself.