The Vanishing Half
by Brit Bennett
Award: Goodreads Winner 2020
Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2021, BookTube Finalist 2021, Carnegie Longlist 2021, Dublin Longlist 2021, National Book Longlist 2020, NY Times Finalist 2020, Women’s Prize Finalist 2021
Date Read: February 3, 2023
Two Black twins with aspirations for a bigger life decide to leave the small town of Mallard for the big city of New Orleans. Although this had been Desiree’s dream forever, once they had actually left home, Stella was the one who was determined to make it. The harsh realities of city life began to wear down Desiree’s dream, but Stella adopted her sisters’ dream and ran with it.
Keeping in mind this story began in the 1950s, the difference between black and white lives were still profoundly different. Not much has changed now except Americans love to say racism is dead while it still happens all around us. I would think it was almost easier back then because you knew what it was you were dealing with instead of being constantly gaslighted. But I digress…
Stella decided pretty early on in their adventure that the best way to make a future for herself was to “pass.” She was white enough to be seen as white, as long as she could master the confidence and speech required. When she worked as a secretary in New Orleans, her boss Blake instantly took a liking to her and when he moved to Boston, asked her to come with him. Not long afterwards, they were dating and eventually married. Yes, the tried and true secretary marries her boss.
Blake and Kennedy, the daughter that followed, never knew about Stella’s past. She never spoke about her family and told everyone that she was an only child with dead parents, especially never mentioning she was a twin.
During this time, Desiree had gone and married an abusive man and narrowly escaped with her and her daughter Jude. What she had hoped would be a brief stay at home with her mom in Mallard turned into a 20 year reprieve. Desiree’s dreams were now given to Jude, who was sent to college in California. While there, she accidentally bumped into her aunt at a party she was working at as a caterer. She instantly befriended her cousin Kennedy in an attempt to get to know her aunt.
The Vanishing Half refers to Stella divorcing herself from her family and burying herself in the life of a white person. She created opportunities for herself that otherwise wouldn’t have existed and lived a life so far removed from the poverty she had grown up with. Her husband was successful and she was a housewife, floating in her backyard pool or taking herself for drives with the vast hours she had to herself. The best privilege of all was the education she was able to get, finishing with a PhD and full-blown professorship.
For all this opportunity, though, Stella was completely isolated in her true identity. She never let her husband and daughter close enough to really know who she was or how growing up in a black community shifted her perspective. She was certain they would never accept her if they knew. She hid herself so completely that she vanished from her own life and that of her twin.
Bennett explores identity and how we choose to define ourselves within the social construct. Stella chooses to define herself as white. Reese, Jude’s boyfriend, chooses to identify himself as male because he knows that’s what he really is inside. Barry, Reese and Jude’s dear friend, chooses to identify as male but needs to acknowledge his female alter ego in a drag show twice a month.
All of these characters know what the rules of society are and yet find a way to be true to who they are, perhaps with the exception of Stella. She thinks she wants to live a white life but can never fully settle herself into the reality she has chosen. The struggle to be true to who you are is what ultimately drives this novel.
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