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Willard Savoy; African American Comics & PulpsBiblio.com

African American Literature Willard Savoy's Alien Land and Racial Passing in the Jim Crow South 1950

1950réf. 191321950. Savoy Willard. Alien Land 1950 follows a light-skinned Black man who passes as white while confronting the racial divisions of the Jim Crow South making passing segregation interracial relationships and mixed racial ancestry central to the novel. Savoy places his protagonist between Black and white social worlds and develops the consequences of a racial classification system that assigns different rights and treatment according to perceived race. The protagonist ultimately acknowledges his mixed ancestry and enters an interracial marriage giving the novel an ending that directly challenges the racial boundaries governing marriage and social life in much of the United States at the time of publication. Savoy Willard. Alien Land. New York: Signet Books 1950. 192 pages. Illustrated wrappers depict a young Black woman in a canary-yellow dress inside a sheriff's office with two white men standing behind her. Above the title appears the publisher's line "Between two worlds-an unforgettable novel of love and fear." The phrase "between two worlds" corresponds directly to the novel's treatment of racial passing while the sheriff's-office setting places a Black woman within an explicitly Southern law-enforcement environment. Signet's cover therefore markets the racial conflict of the narrative through both its advertising language and an image structured around race gender and legal authority. Published while Jim Crow statutes enforced racial segregation across the South and anti-miscegenation laws prohibited interracial marriage in numerous states Alien Land addressed subjects with immediate legal as well as social consequences in 1950. Savoy's white-passing protagonist permits the narrative to depict different treatment according to whether others perceive him as Black or white while the interracial marriage at the conclusion directly confronts the legal and social color line around which the story is organized. Reading crease to spine with rubbing to spine panel and consistent toning throughout. Gutter beginning to crack but holding. Otherwise very good condition. A 1950 Signet paperback documenting the treatment of passing segregation mixed ancestry and interracial marriage within postwar American popular fiction. unknown