There are several instances in the text in which Thurman seems to suggest that race is something that can be performed, something that requires an audience, or something that one might try to manipulate by donning a costume or putting on a mask. An early example is Hazel, from USC, whom Emma Lou views as disgracefully playing the role of the primitive Negro. Emma Lou disdains Hazel’s “circus-like appearance” (44) and “darky-like clownishness” (46), feeling ashamed by the way in which Hazel “play[s] the darky for the amused white students” (55). But if Hazel acts out the stereotype of the uncivilized Negro, then Emma Lou plays a role herself, constantly trying to mold herself into the likeness of what she conceives as ‘the right sort of people.’ The way in which she manipulates her appearance to better play this role is rather interesting, for she seems to sheds one mask for another; she uses acids and bleaching creams to “remove this unwelcome black mask from her face” (23) while dousing herself in powder and makeup to construct yet another mask to wear. If she considers her blackness a mask yet her efforts to reject it result in the donning of a new mask, do we ever see her authentic, unmasked self? (Perhaps at the end when she resolves to “begin life anew, always fighting, not so much for acceptance by other people, but for acceptance of herself by herself” (217)?) Other instances of performing race can be seen in the figure of Arline who literally performs as a mulatto in a show about Negro life, coating herself in powder to become darker. Emma Lou can recognize a sense of falsity in this sort of performance, more so than in her own, doubting the veracity of the plot and the characters and considering the show “a mad caricature” (105). Even the colored actresses in the show must make a performance of their race: “Their makeup and the lights gave them an appearance of sameness” (117). At the real cabaret, Emma Lou too senses “a note of artificiality” in the scene, aware that the two female entertainers are so self-consciously performing their race and gender for an audience of both white and black men and women. To her, the audience’s captivation implicates them in the performance: “At last the audience and the actors were as one” (110). Even at the house-rent party, what we might assume would be the closest approximation to authentic Harlem life, the party-goers are transformed into performers. Alva’s guests study the action with fervid interest and amazement, treating the partygoers, presumably, as material for future writings or artworks. However, there does seem to be a certain rawness to the house-rent party; the dancing and the music are more spontaneous, less contrived than the cabaret scenes. Emma Lou feels as though the atmosphere “create[s] another person in her stead” (149). But is this new person a more authentic version of Emma Lou, one that has loosened itself of its many masks, or is it yet another posture that she has assumed to accommodate herself to a new environment? Also, how is it that Emma Lou can detect the performance of race around her yet cannot own up to her own playacting?