review: We Wear The Mask

[jesse_the_k]

We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America—Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page, eds. print, ebook

Racial, ethnic, class, and gender passing are covered in this essay anthology: not all are great, so it’s a good library candidate. I sorely missed any discussion of disability. I highly recommend:

• Skyhorse’s “College Application Essay Number Two,” which explores a deep identity complication: his mother taught him he was Native yet he had no Native ancestors.
• In “Letter to the Lady Who Mistook Me for the Help at the National Book Awards or Some Meditations on Style” by the poet Patrick Rosal writes a fever dream of pride in his immigrant roots, his skill with a needle, his sartorial wit as he imagines a dozen ways to set this annoying white woman straight.
• “Which Lie Did I Tell” by Trey Ellis wonders who will find him out: “I’m not a real professor, I just play one in art school.” The wide variety of racial and class niches he has occupied equip him well to “fit in,” but leave him always edgewise.
• Lisa and Clarence Page, a white woman and black man married to each other, raise fascinating issues about the value of identity politics in their separate essays.
• Stepping on a Star by Gabrielle Belot explores her gender transition, it’s welcome to see the topic of passing addressed in a non-trans anthology.

Read if … you have never had to question your identity in society.

Avoid if … You’re not interested in thinking hard.

Comments

[bibliofile]

I just read that too! Excellent book. A good start on the concept of passing. Includes discussion of Rachel Dolezall, too.

(Invisible disabilities, well, that's a whole other series of books, innit?)