Racial passing has long been a subject of fascination in American literature, as the act destabilizes notions of race as a stable marker of identity. How, then, are the complexities of passing narratives rendered in other linguistic and cultural contexts? This study examines two French translations of Nella Larsen's PASSING (1929) from three different perspectives. The first section assesses how the paratexts surrounding the French editions set up reader expectations of PASSING and its Harlem Renaissance setting. Following is an examination of the French texts' approaches to translating cultural signifiers and how these decisions give an idea of the intended readership of each edition. The last section compares passages from the source and target texts on a stylistic level to determine whether there are significant differences in narratorial attitudes toward race or toward characters who pass that could lead to divergent interpretations of the work's prevailing themes.