The Vanishing Half

The plot of The Vanishing Half is seems simple on the surface: identical twin sisters Stella and Desiree choose to lead completely different lives.

But it’s much deeper than that — you see, Stella and Desiree are born and raised in the fictional town of Mallard, Louisiana, a community of light-skinned Black Americans. (The slave-born founder of the town imagined a place “each generation lighter than the one before.”) As young girls in the 1940s, they witness their father’s lynching — and at age 16, they run away to New Orleans in search of a different life. The girls end up in different worlds; Desiree returns home to their Black community with her daughter, and Stella has left her blackness behind, passing for white, marrying a white man, and raising a white daughter. The sisters, and their daughters, are so well constructed and the story is so well told.

There was an interview Brit Bennett did in The Wall Street Journal, and this exchange has stuck with me:

Kiley Reid: One thing I loved about this book is that I felt like it hit home on two very different points. The first is—I agree with Toni Morrison—race is a construct. On one end, race is nothing. At the same time, race is everything. From hair texture, to your neighborhood, to your attitude, to the way you speak.

Brit Bennett: I think what you’re saying, that contradiction, is exactly what I was interested in when writing the book. The idea that someone who’s passing, if they can perform race, then is race not a performance? But the idea that race is something that is so real and all- encompassing that it can even dictate which side of the cemetery you’re buried on. For me, it was that duality, or contradiction, I found so interesting and uncomfortable to fit in.

What works so well about The Vanishing Half is Bennett’s ability to balance this duality: of race being everything, and nothing. Smart, thought-provoking, and just so well told. If you read her first book, The Mothers, you will love this. If you haven’t read The Mothers, you will love this. Basically: Read The Vanshing Half — the novel is sure to be a classic in the years to come.

Rating: ★★★★★