The Age-Old Trick of ‘Passing’: Fiction Writer the Latest to be Disgraced by Lies About Heritage

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Mar 20, 2023

“The news was a slap in the face for those of us who knew him,” she continued. “We mourned him, but we also reeled in shock. Hache passed for something he wasn’t, even at home with his husband in Berwyn Heights (a Washington suburb), He did the same with colleagues and students at George Washington University and at the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. I wasn’t the only one who felt betrayed. And so terribly sad.”

Yet, as she also noted, the literary world has its own version of “passing,” as we Americans call the age-old trick of “passing for white” to thwart racial restrictions, if your complexion is light enough.

Among nonracial examples, my wife reminded me of John le Carré, also known as David Cornwell, the bestselling British spy novelist. Or Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who, to dodge sexist bias, replaced her own name with George Sand. Did Herman Glenn Carroll think similarly to avoid discrimination? Or take advantage of it?

Unsurprisingly, a number of Cuban American bloggers have been upset with Carrillo, putting his faux-Cuban pose in the same trash bucket as Rachel Dolezal or George Santos.

Cuban American author and translator Achy Obejas, who fled Cuba with her family as a child and now lives in California, spotted signs of ethnic inauthenticity in Carrillo/Carroll’s act when he signed up for her Cuban American literature class at DePaul University.

Like some other Spanish-speaking readers, she had noticed some of Carrillo’s language didn’t accurately reflect the linguistic differences in structure and slang expressed by different nationalities. For example, his novel, “Loosing My Espanish,” uses the word “vato” often as a Cuban expression, even though the word, which means “guy” or “dude,” is “purely Mexican,” Obejas noted.

What explains such charades? In a March 13 profile of Carrillo by New Yorker writer D.T. Max, Carrillo’s sister Maria said she didn’t think her brother was hiding from his blackness. “I just think he wanted a more interesting narrative to his story,” she said, “and who better to write it than himself.”

The thin veil separating his imagination from reality apparently wore too thin. Perhaps the same explains the bizarre coincidence of Carrillo’s controversy leading to the unmasking of another professor at the same university.

Jessica Krug, an African American history expert also at GWU, was found to have falsely claimed African ancestry. She apologetically resigned.

There are others and more probably will emerge in the future. Perhaps such cultural tourism is to be expected in our land of reinvention, but it’s not ethical to lie about it.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)