Allyson Hobbs

discusses

A Chosen Exile:
A History of Racial Passing in American Life

This event includes a book signing

Date

Apr
11
Monday
April 11, 2016
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University ALLYSON HOBBS discusses the paperback release of her book A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life.

About A Chosen Exile

Countless African Americans have passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and communities. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile. This history of passing explores the possibilities, challenges, and losses that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions.

Praise

"Passing, as Allyson Hobbs describes in this brilliant, fascinating new study, is itself as fluid, complex, and contradictory as our ideas of race." —Boston Globe

"A book that is at once literary, cultural, archival and social, crossing the borders of various approaches to the study of history in order to create a collage of a fascinating yet elusive phenomenon. Intrigued by the story of a distant relative who crosses the color line, Hobbs has followed this interest to explore the practice of passing with detail and rigor. Her writing is elegant, bubbling with curiosity even as it is authoritative and revelatory." —San Francisco Chronicle

"[An] incisive cultural history . . . [Hobbs] takes nothing at face value--least of all the idea that the person who is passing is actually and truly of one race or the other . . . [A] critically vigilant work." —New York Times Book Review

Allyson Hobbs
Allyson Hobbs

Allyson Hobbs

Allyson Hobbs is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University.

Photo Credit: Jessica Tampas

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

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Co-Sponsored by Mass Humanities

Mass Humanities

 

Mass Humanities creates opportunities for the people of Massachusetts to transform their lives and build a more equitable Commonwealth through the humanities. Learn more at masshumanities.org.

Purchase the Book
Featured event books will be for sale at the event for 20% off. Thank you for supporting this author series with your purchases.
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