A Chosen Exile

Allyson Hobbs

Related Links

• Read Allyson Hobbs’s New York Times essay on her own childhood experiences “road tripping while black” and the very real dangers, both physical and psychological, still experienced by African Americans who dare to travel for pleasure
• At the Washington Post, read an account by Hobbs and fellow historian Ana Raquel Minian (author of Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration) of their June 2018 visit to a McAllen, TX, immigration detention center and conversations with a small handful of “lucky ones” who have been released to relatives scattered across the country
• In the New Yorker, read Hobbs’s critique of Donald Trump’s first Black History Month as POTUS
• Read Hobbs’s response to the Rachel Dolezal reverse-passing controversy in the New York Times; watch her discuss race as a social construction and as a lived experience with MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry and in a panel on Nerding Out [full conversation here]; and listen to her discuss the Dolezal story on WNYC’s The Takeaway and NPR’s All Things Considered
• At The University of Chicago Magazine, read an in-depth profile of Hobbs and an excerpt from A Chosen Exile
• At the Chronicle of Higher Education, read Hobbs’s explication of the stresses of passing via the story of Alexander L. Manly, who successfully passed for a time, but who eventually gave up a career in publishing (available to him only while he was considered white) so that he could live openly with his black wife and children
• Watch Hobbs give a lecture on A Chosen Exile at the National Archives
• At the New Yorker, read Hobbs’s consideration of Barack Obama’s eulogy for slain Charleston, SC, reverend Clementa Pinckney alongside Lincoln’s second inaugural address
• On NewsOne Now, watch Hobbs talk with Roland Martin about everyday Americans who passed as white, and how they made that difficult choice
• At The Root, read about the OWN documentary Light Girls, which features Hobbs discussing the history of racial passing
• Listen to Hobbs discuss A Chosen Exile, as well as her own family’s experience with racial identification, on The Madison Show, The Mixed Experience, Genealogy Live Talk Radio with Bernice Bennett, and the Irish radio program Moncrieff [at 09:15]
• Read Hobbs’s thoughts on “racial reassignment” in a New York Times exploration of “passing” in American fiction
• At CNN Living, read Hobbs’s essay on Harry Murphy, a fair-skinned African American man who, due to clerical oversight, successfully matriculated at Ole Miss in 1945—seven years before James Meredith was admitted
• Watch Hobbs’s TEDx Stanford lecture on her research into the history of passing
• Visit Hobbs’s website

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