For Angela Murray, the eldest of the Murray sisters, the only thing standing between a happy life and successful career is her color. Masked behind fairer skin and more European features, her racial identity can be forsaken so long as she leaves Philadelphiaand her sisterbehind. Fleeing to New York, Angela enters a new white world learning that prejudice isnt limited to color.
Revisit the critically acclaimed sophomore novel of Crisis editor Jessie Redmon Fauset, Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral (1928).
After the death of their parents, the Murray family consists of just two peopleVirginia, the younger darker-skinned teacher; and Angela, the elder fair-skinned artistboth Black, both women. While Virginia embraces her Blackness entirely; goes on to move to Harlem, teach Black children and marry a Black man, Angela outright rejects itopting to move to New York, pass for white, and use her privilege to shatter the glass ceiling of her race.
But is it enough? While the act of passing gets her foot in the door; allows her the opportunity for artistic success and even leads to a romantic affair, as a woman theres only so far she can go and only so much respect she can garner. If being a woman, even a white woman, limits the ways in which she is able to seek fulfilment in her life, what is the point in trying to pass at all?
Semi-autobiographical in nature, Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral is a coming-of-age novel that questions the intersectionality of race, class, and gender in the early twentieth century.
