Review: The Vanishing Half: A Novel by Brit Bennett

 Dear Lit Loves,

This month I decided to challenge myself and read the 2020 Book of the Year entitled The Vanishing Half: A Novel by Brit Bennett.  Talk about an engrossing read!

First, there are two sisters, Desiree and Stella, who are both light-skinned African American females.  They grow up in the town of Mallard, LA where racism runs deep.  The two sisters witness the traumatic death of their father due to racism.  It leaves a dire impression of what it is like to be black and white in the deep South in the 1950s.  When the sisters are sixteen, they strike out together and head to New Orleans.  Together for a while, the girls share an apartment and a temporary work environment   Then, one sister gets a different job.  A job that in that day and time is really only awarded to white women.  Since this sister has light skin, she realizes she can pass in most environments as a white female.  This sister, Stella, enters into a relationship with a wealthy white man.  She goes on to live a privileged life.  

Meanwhile, the other sister, Desiree, is left to toil on her own and wonders what exactly happened to her sister, Stella, who seemingly disappears one day.  Later, Desiree moves to D.C. and marries a dark-skinned African American man with whom she shares a dark-skinned daughter.  When Desiree's marriage becomes abusive, she and her daughter, Jude, return to Mallard, LA to escape a reality of domestic violence.  They return to Mallard, LA where Desiree moves back into her childhood home, helps her mom, and tries to raise her daughter in a community that thinks of her daughter as "other" and most of the community ostracizes the young girl named Jude.

Both Desiree and Stella have daughters who eventually cross paths.  Desiree's daughter, Jude, puts the pieces of the puzzle together when she sees a woman who looks like her mom's sister Stella at a retirement party where she works as part of the catering crew.  Eventually, Jude realizes Stella's daughter, Kennedy, has no idea that her mother has a sister or that her mother is African American.  Jude tells Kennedy the truth.  Kennedy confronts her mother, Stella, about being black and having a family which she has led her family to believe is dead.  

Meanwhile, Jude enrolls at UCLA and develops a relationship with a transgender male named Reese.  He left home in order to live as his true self which is male.  Jude works to help him pay for the hormones and surgeries he desires so he can become physically male; however, Jude does not reveal any of this to anyone except Reese's friend, Barry who is already aware of the circumstances.  

The reader is confronted with perplexing questions of:  Is it okay to live a life of privilege if people accept you as white when you are only "passing" as white?  Is it okay to create a life of secrets and lies around your real race?  How does a person just up and leave the people who have known and loved them since birth?  Is it acceptable to lie about your race, gender, or family?  Also, what separates people who are one race, but live as a more privileged race and those individuals who reject their birth gender and leave their families to live as their more authentic, opposite gender?  

The questions mount as both sisters eventually encounter one another again later in life.  And the daughters of both sisters remain connected even as their mothers choose to live without actually being an active presence in one another's lives.  Is it ever worth it to completely lose connection with your original birth family?  Can someone just build an entirely new life and identity while leaving their blood relations behind to ponder their whereabouts?  And when is it necessary and healthy to potentially not have relations with members of one's birth family?

This is an incredibly well-written book.  It invites the reader to consider issues like racism, domestic violence, prejudice, harassment, the LBGTQ community, and also, who do we define as "family".  This is an insightful, riveting novel that will leave the reader wondering how he/she would handle the various scenarios of each character and their actions.  It is a must read!

Till my next review,

Grace (Amy)