#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEARNAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST NPR * PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR 2021 WOMEN’S PRIZE FINALIST“Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.” —Kiley Reid, … Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.” —Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal
“A story of absolute, universal timelessness …For any era, it’s an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it’s piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be….” – Entertainment Weekly
From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.more
fascinating and I learned a lot.
It was a real eye-opener of a book, allowing me to better understand other people’s worlds, and how complicated life can be.
Loved this book for shedding light on ‘racial passing’ (the idea of Negroes passing as white) and the human consequence of this. Inspired by Bennett’s mother, who grew up in Jim Crow Louisiana and spoke of a town whose inhabitants placed extreme importance on skin tones. The novel is broad-reaching and also touches on sexual discrimination — where’s there’s also the pressure to ‘pass’ sometimes. Authentic voice.
Identical 16 year old twin sisters Stella and Desiree run away from their claustrophobic hometown of Mallard to start a new life in New Orleans. Though exceptionally close, the sisters finally go their separate ways – one embracing her black identity while the other successfully passes herself off as white. A subplot involves the struggle of Reese – the partner of Desiree’s daughter Jude – who identifies and lives as a man while hiding the fact that he is biologically a woman.
This is a story about identity, prejudice in its many forms, domestic violence and inequalities in opportunity due to poverty and wealth.
A well written and enjoyable novel which explores many important issues. However, I personally found it a bit rambling in places and feel a further structural edit would have brought the story together more successfully.
I felt so many things while reading this.
If you could choose your race, would you? The town of Mallard, Louisiana was created for those “who would never be accepted as white, but refused to be treated as (black).” Residents are encouraged to marry and procreate with those of light skin, creating a population of only light skinned patrons. Decedents of Mallard’s creator, twins Desiree and Stella Vignes come to a split in the road of life. One leads towards a path which embraces their heritage, the other forgetting it all together.
In “The Vanishing Half”, author Brit Bennett’s ability to push the envelope becomes very apparent as she challenges the social divides. Identical twin sisters taking two different paths of self-identity is ingenious. She is able to allow her readers to be a part of the sisters’ victories and challenges with the understanding that life is not always greener on the other side.
This book touches on some very difficult subjects; from lynching, racism, physical abuse, sexual abuse, gender identity, and Alzheimer’s; just to name a few. Therefore, if these may be triggers for you, be forewarned. There are also many instances of profanity and the timeline jumps around a bit giving this book a rating of 4 out of 5 stars.
All in all, this is an intriguing story of self-identity, family, and the choices we make. Highly recommend to someone interested in learning about those unlike themselves, in other words, everyone.
Wonderfully written, well-balanced, compelling story.
This is the story of twins, Desiree and Stella Vignes, light-skinned black women who grew up in a town called Mallard.
Desiree, the wilder of the two twins, convinces quiet, subdued Stella to move away with her, then strangely, Stella disappears.
The story splits and follows the different paths of the twins. One lives as a black woman, the other, as white. The writing is absolutely superb. To see my full review and who should read go to https://cyndiezahner.com/2021/08/10/the-vanishing-half-by-britt-bennett/.
Thought provoking!
Twin sisters grow up in a small town in the South. When one of them decides to pass for white and vanishes, ripple effects are felt across the entire family. I really enjoyed the way this book was written and was thoroughly invested in the characters.
I read this book with my book club and thought this was a good book. I learned that I’m a romance reader because I was more interested in Reece and Jude’s relationship. The vanishing half was about more than the twin sisters. Every character in this book had a part of their life that they were trying to vanish. I found the author’s way of including layers to be very good. It was a well-written book with an ending I didn’t quite expect.
An interesting read that I still think about from time to time.
The complex characters and insightful exploration of our concepts of race and other labels that identify without knowing a person was beautifully written. I loved many of the characters, felt annoyed yet sympathetic for others, but all-in-all loved opening the book again and again to lose myself in their stories.
I listened to it on audiobook and gasped when the credit started. I was not ready for it to end. A great listen though with an interesting storyline and characters.
A good book club discussion book. Although set in the 50’s – 80’s, the issues are contemporary.
I taught this book this semester in my African American Studies course and the students and I had a great time discussing some of the many themes in the book like colorism, racism, sisterhood, family, and the list goes on and on. Several of my students chose to focus their research on some of the themes found in this book.
This was a splendid work of fiction that brought out the truths of racism and colorism. It was so sad to see the experiences that the twins went through as children growing up their small town and how these same experiences made them choose such different paths. Living a lie (or having to maintain the lie) took a toll on Stella and tainted past and future relationships. This was a sad book for many reasons, but I would definitely recommend reading it. It opens your eyes to many truths in our world from the past and that still unfortunately have followed us into the present.
Thought provoking on many levels. The characters remain with you.
This was a fascinating and compelling story about racism, colorism, and identity (gender and race). The main theme I took from the story was that much of reality is just perception. It has more to do with what a person is taught than actual skin color or gender.
There are many thought-provoking topics in this book, from what I mentioned above, to a historical standpoint (the story starts in the 50s ends in the ’90s or ’00s) and about just plain survival.
A compelling, emotional, expansive read that kept me compulsively turning the pages. I blazed through this book in just a few days!
What you think will be the story – the hook – isn’t the story. It’s there, always in the background, the why behind your reading and the characters’ motivations, but THE PEOPLE are the story.
It’s an exploration of who we are and who we could be, the ways in which so many of us, either in small or massive ways, are multiple versions of ourselves at once.
I loved it!