cosmopolitanism desire passing Nella Larsen The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man James Weldon Johnson
Abstract:
This thesis examines Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) and James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912) through the lens of cosmopolitanism. It examines each character’s desire to achieve a more cosmopolitan lifestyle that allows them more freedom of movement. However, all three of the novels’ main characters are limited both by societal constraints and by their own personal limitations. Although no character achieves a perfect cosmopolitan lifestyle, they achieve imperialist and bourgeois forms of cosmopolitanism, examples of what Scott L. Malcomson has called “actually existing cosmopolitanisms.”
