A Study On Passing Narratives In Nell Zink’s Mislaid

Nell Zink is an outstanding contemporary American novelist.Her work Mislaid has attracted wide attention since it was published,and been longlisted for the“National Book Award”.The novel tells an absurd story that happened in the middle and late 20 th century in the south of the United States.Based on the the theory of passing narratives,this paper analyzes three passing phenomena in the novel:sexuality passing,racial passing and social class passing,and mainly explores the passing trace,passing motivation,and the significance revealed through passing,so as to find the absurdity of American postmodern society hidden behind the story.The research shows that invisibility and unrecognizability provide respectively the presupposition for sexuality passing and racial passing.Compared with traditional passing narrative,the passing in the novel shows unique features.In passing trace,the hero and heroine in the novel completes both-passers sexuality passing in a couple;the heroine passes her and her daughter from white to black,and passes them from upper class to the bottom.In terms of passing motivation,these passing is different from the traditional mode where passers move from the margin to the mainstream to obtain rights.It is out of the urge to experience of sexual freedom in counterculture tradition,the pursuit of independent and free life,and the critique of upper class centralism.On the aspect of social significance revealed by these passing,through passing narrative the novel reflects the anti-traditionality,uncertainty,and decentralization of postmodern society in America,manifesting ambiguity and absurdity in postmodern society.