ABSTRACT
Early in “Re-Encounter,” the second part of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel Passing, a black maid enters a dining room and serves grapefruit to her employers. Larsen emphasizes both the woman’s color-“mahogany”—and her name, “Zulena,” an exotic counterpoint to the middle-of-the-American-road names of her middleclass mistress and master: Irene, Brian. She is also dehumanized, not given the status even of her domestic title but called a “creature,” a vaguely animalistic term that seems to derive from her skin color.4 The description of her color, too, associates her with furniture, further objectifying her as one part of the machinery of the modern breakfast table. She says nothing, does little, and disappears quickly, leaving the reader with an oddly precise picture of this decidedly minor character.
