08 May 2026
5.5 ELH Richard Gabri on race, liminality and passing in The Great Gatsby
Hopkins Press Podcasts
About
Today on the podcast, we talk with Richard Gabri about his new article for ELH, “All White in the End: From the Passage of James Wait to the Passing of James Gatz; Intertextuality and the Riddle of Race in The Great Gatsby.”
Building on the work of Carlyle Van Thompson, whose 2004 book The Tragic Black Buck: Racial Masquerading in the American Literary Imagination explored the ways that Jay Gatsby can be read as a white-passing Black man, Gabri and his high school students began a literary exploration of the classic novel, and discovered fascinating intertextual links between Fitzgerald's titular character to James Wait, the protagonist of Joseph Conrad's controversial novella known as The Children of the Sea. Gabri links Gatsby’s racial passing to Fitzgerald’s rewriting of Conrad’s James Wait, a Black imposter whose presence aboard the ship "Narcissus" produces projection, suspicion, and moral crisis.
In pre-press, the article has already garnered a great deal of attention, with over 8000 downloads. In 2024, Gabri and his students traveled to the American Literature Association conference in Chicago, where they presented their findings — becoming perhaps the first high school students to present at ALA. Last year, as The Great Gatsby celebrated its 100th anniversary, the research received mainstream press attention, including an article from Bay Area PBS affiliate KQED.
“All White in the End: From the Passage of James Wait to the Passing of James Gatz; Intertextuality and the Riddle of Race in The Great Gatsby” is slated to publish in the summer 2026 issue of ELH, and will be available #OpenAccess at Project MUSE.
Richard Gabri teaches high school English at Bentley School in Lafayette, California, and holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Northwestern University.
Building on the work of Carlyle Van Thompson, whose 2004 book The Tragic Black Buck: Racial Masquerading in the American Literary Imagination explored the ways that Jay Gatsby can be read as a white-passing Black man, Gabri and his high school students began a literary exploration of the classic novel, and discovered fascinating intertextual links between Fitzgerald's titular character to James Wait, the protagonist of Joseph Conrad's controversial novella known as The Children of the Sea. Gabri links Gatsby’s racial passing to Fitzgerald’s rewriting of Conrad’s James Wait, a Black imposter whose presence aboard the ship "Narcissus" produces projection, suspicion, and moral crisis.
In pre-press, the article has already garnered a great deal of attention, with over 8000 downloads. In 2024, Gabri and his students traveled to the American Literature Association conference in Chicago, where they presented their findings — becoming perhaps the first high school students to present at ALA. Last year, as The Great Gatsby celebrated its 100th anniversary, the research received mainstream press attention, including an article from Bay Area PBS affiliate KQED.
“All White in the End: From the Passage of James Wait to the Passing of James Gatz; Intertextuality and the Riddle of Race in The Great Gatsby” is slated to publish in the summer 2026 issue of ELH, and will be available #OpenAccess at Project MUSE.
Richard Gabri teaches high school English at Bentley School in Lafayette, California, and holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Northwestern University.