In African American literary history, passing narratives examine identity instability, secrecy, survival, social performance, and the psychological costs of racial categorisation. In poetry, references to passing may symbolise fractured belonging, social coercion, invisibility, or impossible choices under racist systems. The concept matters because it reveals how race operates not simply as identity but as surveillance, constructed perception, and historically enforced hierarchy shaping intimate human experience.

The racial passing narrative in poetry explores the psychological costs and political implications of individuals who can pass as white choosing to do so — including the guilt, self-division, and loss of community that this choice often entails. Poets have used passing to probe the instability of racial categories, the violence that makes passing necessary, and the complex ethical terrain of choosing racial identity under a system that punishes Blackness. Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and more recently Natasha Trethewey have engaged passing narratives. Students should connect racial passing to broader questions of performance, authenticity, and the social construction of race. Related terms include colourism, Black subjectivity, Black embodiment, and counterstory.