Identity, Race, Privileges, Transgender — ‘The Vanishing Half’ Reviewed
Published by Riverhead Books in 2020, Brit Bennett’s historical novel The Vanishing Half is about the light-skinned Black twin sisters Desiree and Stella Vignes. The story takes place in the 1950s through to the 1980s. The twin girls have grown up as close as one can imagine, until they run away from their snobbish, light-skinned “coloured” town. They start their new lives in a new city together, until they each go their own separate ways. They lose touch with one another, and when Desiree flees from her abusive husband with her little daughter, Jude, to their hometown Mallard years later, she has not seen Stella for some 15 years. Little does she know that Stella has constructed a new identity as a white woman and lives in a posh white suburb in Los Angeles.
“If I could go back, I’d do everything different.”
“Like what?” she said.
“Oh, everything.” He turned back to the mirror. “This big ol’ world and we only get to go through it once.”
When Desiree comes back to Mallard after having been gone many years, the reader knows very little about their circumstances and what has happened before. This makes the first pages catchy and interesting on one hand, but on the other also frustrating, as the reader only gets to know Desiree’s perspective and has no insight into where Stella is and what she has been doing since they both went on their own separate paths. It might take the reader a while to get into the story because the information is being delivered only piece by piece while reading. The many time jumps can make it difficult to get committed to the single scenes at first, but they also serve to create a lively and varied picture — and once the reader knows more about the characters, The Vanishing Half is a real page-turner. Once Stella and her daughter, Kennedy, come into the picture, the reader finally gets to know more about Stella’s life; her way into the white society, her fears of being revealed, and her difficulties with her daughter who does not know that she is Black, the book is hard to put down.
The great variety of themes on diversity makes Bennett’s novel special to read. If you are looking for a compelling novel dealing with topics and themes that are all-time important, The Vanishing Half is compulsive reading!
