Neo passing : performing identity after Jim Crow This volume seeks to theorize and explore the concept of neo passing or the proliferation of passing in the post Jim Crow moment. Why in our color blind or post racial moment is passing still of such literary and cultural interest To answer this question chapters in this book focus on a range of passing practices performances and texts that are part of the emerging genre of what we call neo passing narratives. Neo passing narratives are contemporary narratives that depict someone being taken for an identity other than what s he is considered really to be. That these texts are written constructed or produced at a time when passing should have passed reveals that the questions passing raises questions about how identity is performed and contested in relation to social norms are just as relevant now as they were at the turn of the twentieth century