"You're Neither One Thing (N)or The Other": Nella Larsen, Phiiip Roth, and The Passing Trope Donavan L. Ramon ABSTRACT. Philip Roth has historically been situated in a male literary tradition, with critics assessing him alongside Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and more recendy, Charles Chesnutt and Ralph Ellison. Because of his prob- lematic portrayals oF women characters. Roth is not often discussed alongside women writers. My paper goes beyond this by situating Roth alongside a black woman writer, Nella Larsen. In fact, Larsen's Passing (1929) and Roth's The Human Stain (2000) share several thematic and structural similarities, such as the tropes oF belated race learning, double consciousness, anonymous letter writing, taboo sexualities, and ambiguous deaths. My essay argues that these tropes underlie passing narratives and reveal the development oF twen- tieth century passing texts. Philip Roth has always been placed in a male literary tradition, one that includes the likes oF Henry James, Franz Kafka, Saul Bellow, and Bernard Malamud, among others. Over the past decade, since the publication oF his novel The Human Stain (2000), critics have started situating him in an AFrican American literary tradition as well. For example, Matthew Wilson elucidates the "surprising continuities" between Charles Chesnutt's and Philip Roth's narratives oF passing (138). Some critics have also started tracing struc- tural similarities between The Human Stain and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952).' Roth himselF reveals his Fondness For Ellison in his autobiography The Facts (1988). While it is laudable that literary critics have been expand- ing the traditions that Roth fits in, they still overlook the ways in which he is in conversation with women writers. More specifically, they neglect to 45