"The Vanishing Half," by Brit Bennett

“The Vanishing Half” (Riverhead, 2020), by Brit Bennett, has received much attention since its publication earlier this year, and rightfully so. This is partly because the always-important topic of race in America has even more dramatically come to the fore in recent weeks. It is also because of Bennett’s powerful take on race and gender in the United States, both in her prior novel “The Mothers” (see my post of 1/30/17) and in this novel. Her two main characters are twin sisters who grow up in a Black family in a small southern Black town that prides itself on its population’s being very light-skinned. The twins run away together at the age of 16, first landing in New Orleans. They are extremely close. But then one day one of them, Stella, disappears without a word, leaving Desiree behind. Stella is the “vanishing half” of the title. The twins do not have any contact for years, as their lives completely diverge, and Stella has to keep a big secret. She slips into passing as White, and marries a White man who does not know she is Black; she lives in terror of someone finding out her secret. Desiree, on the other hand, chooses a very dark-skinned man for her partner. Both sisters have children; Stella’s daughter is blond, while Desiree’s daughter is dark-skinned. The two daughters become part of the story, and even meet by chance in Los Angeles. There is some closure at the end of the novel, but I won’t give any endings away. The topic of “passing” reminds me of Nella Larsen’s novel titled “Passing,” as well as other books on the subject. Bennett's novel and the others raise many questions about the meaning and significance of race in America, and all of the weight and freight carried by race and color and the way they are perceived. However, the novel is not only “about race,” but also a beautifully written and constructed story of the carefully delineated characters of the twins, their mother, their partners, their daughters, and others.