synopsis of book the vanishing half

The Vanishing Half

45 pages • 1 hour read

The Vanishing Half: A Novel

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Summary and Study Guide

The Vanishing Half , published in June 2020, is the second novel by author Brit Bennett. It became a New York Times bestseller and was selected as a Good Morning America Book Club Pick. The novel explores the themes of female family bonds and the Black experience in America. Bennett covered similar material in her debut novel, The Mothers (2016), which also became a New York Times bestseller. HBO has purchased the film rights to The Vanishing Half with the intention of creating a limited TV series from the material. Page number citations in this guide refer to the Kindle edition.

The novel is set in several locations during different time periods. The story begins in the small village of Mallard, Louisiana, in 1968 and then skips to New Orleans, New York, Southern California, and back to Mallard between 1978 and the early 1980s. Just as the time and location shift among numerous places and decades, the limited third-person narrative point of view shifts among multiple people. Since the novel is driven by the perceptions and recollections of its characters, the story does not move in a linear fashion.

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The plot concerns identical twins Desiree and Stella Vignes, who leave their small Louisiana village at the age of 16 to seek their fortune in New Orleans. Ten years later, their lives have diverged in radically different directions. Desiree has fled an abusive marriage to a Black man and brought her daughter back to Mallard, while Stella is passing for White, is married to a businessman, has a daughter with him, and lives in California.

Much of the novel recounts Desiree’s search for her missing twin and how that search is completed by Desiree’s daughter. In the process, the book explores the themes of how identity is constructed, the role that self-loathing plays in creating an alternate persona, and the social ostracism visited on those who are different from the norm in some way.

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Plot Summary

Identical twins Desiree and Stella Vignes live in Mallard, Louisiana in a community of light-skinned Black people. The villagers are proud of their Caucasian features and coloring, and most of them could pass for White. The Vignes girls have big dreams for their futures. Flamboyant Desiree wants to become an actress, while quiet Stella wants to be a teacher. Their dreams are crushed by their mother, who forces them to leave school at the age of 16 and take jobs as maids to help make ends meet. In 1954, Desiree convinces Stella to run away to New Orleans in search of a better life.

Fourteen years later, Desiree drags herself back to Mallard accompanied by her dark-skinned daughter. They are fleeing Desiree’s abusive husband. In the meantime, Stella has abandoned Desiree to pass for White. She married a wealthy businessman, had a daughter with him, and moved to California. Stella never reveals her identity to anyone and makes no attempt to contact her birth family.

When Desiree’s daughter, Jude, reaches the age of 18, she accepts a college scholarship at UCLA and leaves Mallard. During her time in California, she accidentally catches a glimpse of Stella and meets Stella’s daughter, Kennedy. Jude becomes obsessed with confronting her aunt. In the process, she forms an unlikely bond with Kennedy as the two ponder the meaning of their kinship, even though they look radically different from one another. Because of Jude’s interference, Stella returns to Mallard to repair her broken relationship with her sister and her mother. After this reunion, she goes back to her White life in California, and she is never able to achieve a true sense of identity because her entire life is based on a fabrication.

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The Vanishing Half: Summary and Ending Explained

By: Author Luka

Posted on Last updated: March 31, 2024

Categories Book Summary , Ending Explained

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Note: the following discussion guide contains spoilers, as well as references to critical plot points and the conclusion of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett.

The Vanishing Half is Brit Bennett’s second novel, published in June 2020.The novel instantly became a New York Times bestseller and earned recognition as a Good Morning America Book Club Pick.

The storyline unfolds across diverse locations and timeframes, commencing in Mallard, Louisiana, in 1968, and traversing New Orleans, New York, Southern California, and a return to Mallard between 1978 and the early 1980s. The narrative adopts a limited third-person viewpoint, switching among characters and creating a non-linear trajectory driven by their perceptions and recollections.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Central to the plot are identical twins Desiree and Stella Vignes, who depart Mallard at 16 to carve out their destinies. A decade later, their paths diverge significantly: Desiree escapes an abusive marriage, returning to Mallard with her daughter, while Stella, passing as White, is married with a daughter and resides in California.

Desiree’s quest to locate her missing twin, later taken up by her daughter, constitutes a substantial part of the narrative. The novel probes into identity construction, the influence of self-loathing in shaping alternative personas, and the societal hurdles confronting those deviating from the norm.

In this guide we will go through the complete summary and ending explanation for The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. Enjoy! ✨

Summary  |  Ending Explained

The Vanishing Half Summary

The story starts in April 1968 when Desiree Vignes comes back to Mallard after being away for fourteen years. She brings along her daughter, Jude, who has dark skin.

The first part of the story talks about why Desiree and her twin sister Stella left Mallard in 1954, their time apart in New Orleans, and why Desiree left her abusive husband, Sam Winston, in D.C. to return to Mallard. Back in Mallard, Desiree works at Lou’s Egg House and reconnects with a past lover named Early Jones. Early, who was hired by Desiree’s husband to find her, tells her the truth, and they start a relationship.

The second part takes place ten years later, focusing on Desiree’s daughter, Jude, in Los Angeles. Jude attends UCLA on a track scholarship and meets a photographer named Reese at a Halloween party. They become roommates, and despite some challenges in expressing their feelings, they eventually confess their love for each other.

Jude also helps Reese financially for his breast removal surgery by taking on a second job as a caterer. During a catering job in Beverly Hills, Jude sees someone who looks like her mother’s twin sister, Stella.

Part Three goes back to 1968, this time from Stella’s perspective, now Stella Sanders. Stella started passing as white in New Orleans, married Blake Sanders, and spoke against Black people moving into their neighborhood. Despite her objections, a Black family, the Walkers, moves in, and Stella avoids them until she sees her daughter playing with their daughter, Cindy. Stella rushes out and takes her daughter Kennedy away from the street.

That evening, Loretta returns the doll Kennedy left behind when Stella took her away. Feeling guilty, Stella bakes Loretta a lemon cake and apologizes. They become friends, but Stella hides the friendship from her husband Blake and the neighbors.

Despite their closeness, Stella doesn’t invite Loretta’s family to the neighborhood Christmas party. After Christmas, Kennedy uses a racial slur while playing with Cindy, leading Loretta to ask Stella to stay away. The Walkers face harassment and eventually decide to move, ending Stella’s friendship with Loretta.

In Part Four, set in the fall of 1982, Jude works at a Korean restaurant while waiting for medical school acceptance. She remains fixated on the woman who resembled Stella since the Beverly Hills party. Barry invites Jude and Reese to a play called The Midnight Marauders, where Jude recognizes the lead, Kennedy, as the girl from the party. Jude doesn’t reveal their relation, instead getting a job at the theater to be close to Kennedy, hoping Stella will appear.

Stella, now a statistics instructor, is upset that Kennedy took a break from university for acting. At The Midnight Marauders, Jude confronts Stella, sharing details about Stella and Desiree’s lives. When Jude suggests calling Desiree, Stella runs away.

At the cast party, Kennedy, upset about Stella’s absence, drinks and vents to Jude. Jude retaliates by revealing the truth about Stella’s past. Stella denies it as a prank, and Kennedy’s parents tell her to forget about it. They rent an apartment for Kennedy, avoiding questions about Stella’s past.

Part Five jumps to 1988, with Kennedy landing a role on Pacific Cove. In a flashback, young Kennedy questions Stella about her past. Stella, avoiding the truth, says she’s from Opelousas. During The Midnight Marauders cast party, Jude mentions Mallard, confirming Kennedy’s suspicions about her mother’s past town.

The story jumps to 1985 in New York, where Kennedy lives with her Haitian boyfriend Frantz. After landing a role in an off-off-Broadway musical, Kennedy obsesses over her health and conserves her voice. Jude surprises her at a café, handing her contact information.

They plan to meet after Kennedy’s performance. The next day, Kennedy learns about Mallard, where she might fit in due to her light skin. Realizing her relationship with Frantz is over, Kennedy travels briefly to California, confronts Stella with a childhood photo, but gets little information.

Kennedy spends time in Europe, reinventing herself. In 1996, she becomes a successful real estate agent after her acting career declines. Stella returns to Mallard in 1986 to ask Desiree to stop Jude from contacting Kennedy.

On her journey, she discovers Mallard is now part of Palmetto. Life has changed for Desiree, Early, and Adele. In the present, Stella reconciles with Desiree after admitting her lies to Kennedy. Desiree holds a sobbing Stella, who gives Early her wedding ring to help with expenses.

A month later, Stella hears from Kennedy, picks her up at the airport, and admits giving the ring to Desiree. On the ride home, Stella encourages Kennedy to ask anything.

In the final chapter, Desiree informs Jude of Adele’s passing. Jude calls Kennedy, who declines to inform Stella. Reese and Jude fly to Mallard for the funeral. After the burial, instead of attending the repast, Jude and Reese find solace in a river, hoping it will wash away their past.

The Vanishing Half Ending Explained

So, what happens at the end of The Vanishing Half?

In the final parts of the novel, Jude becomes a pivotal force in bringing together the different threads of the Vignes family. The narrative revolves around the theme of secrets, both those concealed and those laid bare. Kennedy, struggling as a stage actress, receives a photograph from Jude depicting the twins as children.

Recognizing her mother in the picture, Kennedy confronts Stella months later, attempting to break through her wall of secrets. Stella, living under a false identity, denies being in the photo, but Kennedy remains unconvinced. This prompts Stella to visit Mallard, urging Desiree to keep Jude away from Kennedy, as Stella’s White persona cannot withstand her daughter knowing she is a liar.

The relationship between Kennedy and Stella transforms, grounded in shared secrets. Stella unveils her life story, while Kennedy pledges to protect her mother’s secret from Blake. She also convinces Jude to shield Stella from the news of Adele’s death.

As the novel concludes, Stella’s identity remains elusive, echoing the overarching theme of identity explored throughout. The text leaves the question open-ended—whether we are defined by others’ perceptions or if we continually reconstruct ourselves.

In a conversation about revealing Adele’s death to Stella, Kennedy and Jude encapsulate the enigma of Stella’s identity: “‘ Maybe she’d want to know this ,’ Jude said. ‘ Trust me, she doesn’t ,’ Kennedy said. ‘ You don’t know her like I do. ’ […] ‘ I don’t know her at all ,’ Jude said” (333).

The novel leaves the nature of Stella’s identity unresolved, inviting reflection on the complexity and fluidity of identity throughout a lifetime.

How did you like the ending of the novel? Happy reading! ❤️

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The Vanishing Half

Quick recap & summary by chapter.

The Full Book Recap and Chapter-by-Chapter Summary for The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett are below.

Quick(-ish) Recap

In Part I (1968) , Stella and Desiree Vignes are twins from Mallard, Louisiana, a town full of light-skinned Black people, who run away from home at 16. Desiree always wanted to leave, but Stella isn't motivated to run away until they are pulled out of high school to work as cleaners. Desiree marries a dark-skinned man ( Sam ) and has a daughter, Jude . Meanwhile, Stella got a job as secretary while passing as white. However, one day she left, leaving only a note. Now, 14 years later in 1968, Desiree has returned home with her daughter to escape Sam's abuse.

Early Jones makes a living tracking people down and bounty hunting. He's offered a job (from Sam) to find Desiree. He accepts because he recognizes Desiree from when they were teenagers. Upon seeing her bruises, he lies to Sam and says he can't find her. Desiree also tells Early about Stella, and Early offers to find her. Together, they track Stella's location to Boston.

In Part II (1978) , Jude is now in college at UCLA. As a dark-skinned girl who grew up with only light-skinned Black people, she has been bullied and excluded her whole life. She meets and falls for Reese, a southern boy who is transgendered. Reese wants to get surgery for his chest, so Jude gets a higher-paying catering job to help save money. One night at work, she sees a woman (Stella) and the shock makes her drop a bottle of wine.

In Part II (1968) , we learn that Stella had married her boss, Blake Sanders , and they had moved away. They are wealthy and have a blond-haired, violet-eyed daughter, Kennedy . There is a Black family ( Reginald and Loretta Walker, with their daughter Cindy ) moving into their neighborhood, to everyone's displeasure. Stella befriends Loretta, but tries to hide it from others. One day, Loretta cuts off their friendship after Kennedy calls Cindy the n-word. Meanwhile, the Walkers are harassed and soon move away.

In Part IV (1982) , Jude is now working while applying to medical school. She attends a friend's show where she meets Kennedy, recognizing her as the violet-eyed girl who was with the woman she that looked like her mother. Kennedy is pursuing an acting career, and she confirms that it was Stella. Stella is now working as an adjunct professor. She was depressed after the Walkers left and ended up going back to school. Jude and Kennedy get to know each other, but when Kennedy drunkenly insults Jude, Jude angrily tells her the truth about Stella and Mallard.

In Part V (1985) , Kennedy and Jude end up meeting again in New York. Jude and Reese are there for Reese's surgery. Jude gives Kennedy a photo of their mothers. Kennedy ends up confronting Stella with the photo, but Stella lies, to Kennedy's frustration. Stella has always been secretive, but now Kennedy knows her mother has been lying to her. Kennedy moves to Europe.

In Part VI (1986) , Stella goes home in order to ask Desiree to tell Jude to leave Kennedy alone. Stella has not seen her daughter since the incident with the photograph. At home, Stella learns that their mother Adele now has Alzheimer's. On seeing Desiree again, Stella asks for forgiveness. They hug and they catch up, but then Stella sneaks out at night to leave and return to her life. Stella also gives Early her wedding ring to sell off for money to help with Adele's care. Soon after, Kennedy finally decides to move home. When Kennedy asks about the ring, Stella is happy she's back and tired of lying and finally tells her the full truth. However, Stella asks Kennedy not to tell her father (Stella's not planning on changing her life).

Adele passes away, and Jude and Reese go home to attend the funeral. Jude is still in touch with Kennedy and lets her know, though their mothers do not know they speak. Desiree and Early move to Houston.

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Chapter-by-Chapter Summary

Part 1: the lost twins (1968).

Mallard, Louisianna is a farm town originally founded by a light-skinned black man, who dreamed of and succeeded in building a town full of light-skinned black people. Many generations later, the Vignes twins (Stella and Desiree) are light-skinned black girls and descendants of the town’s founder. They ran away from home at sixteen on August 14, 1954 . Desiree married a (very dark-skinned) black man, Sam Winston , and had a child. Stella has been passing for white.

The twins’ father, Leon , died when they were younger, and their mother Adele was a maid. Desiree had hated the small town and wanted to get out. Stella didn’t consider leaving until they were pulled out of school in 10th grade to work as maids as well. Before, Stella had been hoping to go to college. When a town celebration (Founders Day Picnic) rolls around, they run away, using the festivities as cover.

The twins move to New Orleans together, but Stella leaves after a year or so. Six months later, in 1956, Desiree gets a job with the FBI in the fingerprinting department and moves to D.C. There, Desiree meets Sam, an attorney with the Bureau. Now, 14 years later, Desiree has returned to Mallard with her daughter, Jude . Sam started hitting her, so she had to leave.

Present day (1968) in New Orleans, Early Jones is a bounty hunter-slash-people-finder. He works with Big Ceel , a bail bondsman. He’s approached for a job from a guy (Sam) looking for the woman who ran off on him (Desiree). When Early sees her photo, he recognizes her from one summer he spent as a teenager in Mallard.

When the twins were young, Leon Vignes was murdered by five white men. They beat him while the twins watched. When Leon survived, the men went to the hospital and shot him. The men claimed Leon had written dirty notes to a white woman, but Leon was illiterate and the rumor was they’d really killed him for underbidding them in a business contract.

Present day (1968), Adele is glad to have Desiree back, and she helps Desiree and Jude settle in. At school, the other kids stare at Jude because she is so much darker than them. Desiree applies to be a fingerprint examiner at the Sheriff’s office and aces the test, but when he sees her address listed in Mallard, she’s rejected (presumably, he realizes she is black).

Desiree goes to her grandmother Lorna Vignes’s bar, The Surly Goat . She recognizes Early Jones sitting there, who she’d met the summer before she ran away. Desiree and Early had liked each other, but Adele had shooed him away because he was too dark-skinned. Now, in the bar, Early notices her bruises. When Sam calls to ask if Early has located her, Early stalls and says he needs more time.

Desiree gets a job at the local diner, Lou’s Egg House . She thinks about how when they first left Mallard, they got jobs doing laundry at Dixie Laundry in New Orleans. Stella later got a job as a secretary at a department store Maison Blanche where they only accept whites. Then, one day Stella was disappeared, leaving only a note saying sorry, but she’s “got to go my own way”. When Desiree tells Early about this, he offers to find Stella.

Early lies and tells Sam that Desiree wasn’t in Mallard. Early has to first do a job in Texas, but Desiree and Early talk on the phone in the meantime. Early tells Desiree about being raised by his aunt and uncle when he was eight. His parents dropped him off one night, since they had too many children. At twenty, he’d been caught stealing car parts and was sent to Angola State Prison for four years.

Adele advises Desiree to leave Stella alone, since she doesn’t want to be found. But, Early and Desiree head to New Orleans to look for her anyway. She calls Farrah Thibodeaux , who the twins had been friends with. Farrah had been a fellow runaway, waiting tables at a jazz club, but was now married to an alderman. Farrah had seen Stella a while back, on the arm of a handsome white man. Early and Desiree then go to Maison Blanche, where they provide Stella’s last forwarding address — in Boston, Massachusetts .

Part II: Maps (1978)

In 1978, Jude arrives in Los Angeles. She’s on her way to UCLA, to attend on a track scholarship. As the only dark girl growing up, she was used to being bullied and being lonely. She still wonders about her father, even though she remembers the bruises her mother used to have. Back in Mallard, Desiree has been home now for ten years. Early comes and goes and stays with them when he visits, though Adele still doesn’t like it.

Early had ended up tracking Stella through Boston, but the trail ran cold from there. At some point, he stopped really trying because it was clear Stella didn’t want to be found, despite Desiree’s desire to find her. Secretly, Early had also kept tabs on Sam, who was now living with a new wife and three boys.

In college, Jude meets Reese Carter , a southern boy from Arkansas. He left home as Therese Anne Carter , but arrived in Los Angeles as Reese Carter (he’s trans). Reese works as a cleaner at a gym near UCLA and loves photography. Jude and Reese quickly become inseparable. Reese’s friend Barry is a black high school chemistry teacher who transforms into Bianca to perform at a club two nights a month. Reese and Jude move in together as friends, but soon become lovers.

One night, they talk about their first kisses. Jude’s is Lonnie Goudeau , who used to bully her. Later, when they were 16, he kissed her outside a barn. What she didn’t tell Reese was that they kept fooling around, meeting secretly at night, but during the day he’d ignore her. Reese’s first kiss was a girl at church.

Reese tells her that he left home because his father beat him after catching him fooling around with his sister’s friend, dressed as a man. He considers getting surgery for his chest, but it’s expensive because of the risks the doctor is taking in case he gets caught performing the surgery. Jude wants to help, so she gets a higher paying job from Barry’s cousin Scooter , who drives a catering van.

One night Jude works a retirement party for a rich white man, Mr. Hardison , who her boss Carla Stewart (who owns the catering company) says is an important client. There, Jude meets a girl with violet eyes — but it’s seeing the woman that the girl arrives with that causes Jude to drop a bottle of wine.

Part III: Heartlines (1968)

In 1968, on the same night Desiree had returned to Mallard, Stella (now Stella Sanders ) was in Brentwood attending a Homeowners’ Association meeting. The residents are angry that one of the houses had been sold to a black man. Stella, usually soft-spoken, passionately argues that they can’t let black people into the neighborhood. Nevertheless, the house is sold to the black family, after the buyer threatens to sue.

Stella’s husband, Blake Sanders , is the son of a banking executive and a Yale graduate. He was working in the marketing department of Maison Blanche when Stella was hired as his secretary. They have a blond haired, violet eyed daughter Kennedy , and they live a life of comfort. Blake believes Stella’s family are all deceased.

Stella thinks back to her life as a cleaner for Mr. Dupont before she left Mallard. Mr. Dupont would at times corner her and sexually assault her, and she knew she had to leave.

Reginald (“Reg”) and Loretta Walker move in with their daughter Cindy . The protests dissipate, since it turns out Reginald is a famous black actor who plays Sergeant Taylor , a beloved character on a popular television show, Frisk . Blake loves the show and is friendly toward Reg. However, the sight of the Walkers makes Stella anxious.

One day, Stella rips Kennedy away when she sees her playing with Cindy. Stella knows she has overreacted, and brings over a cake to apologize to Loretta, which leads to planning a play date. Over time, Stella befriends Loretta and they grow close. She longs to tell Loretta the truth, and she secretly goes over to Loretta’s while Blake is at work. Loretta has been gearing up for a fight with the school over letting her daughter in, but Stella warns her against it. Loretta eventually gives in and sends Cindy to a black school. Around this time, MLK and Robert F. Kennedy are assassinated.

Stella recalls the feeling of freedom when they’d first moved to New Orleans and she first started passing for white. After a near accident at the laundry place, Stella had been fired, and Desiree had encouraged her to “pass” in order to get the secretarial gig, working for Blake Sanders. He eventually invited her to dinner. Stella felt safe with him, in a world divorced from one where her father had been murdered and she’d been sexually assaulted.

In present day (1968), the other women in the neighborhood gossip about Stella befriending Loretta. When she comes home late, she tells Blake she’s been visiting the other white women, and he finds it odd how friendly she’s being. However, at their annual Christmas party, some neighbors pointedly bring up her friendship with Loretta. Afterwards, Stella and Blake get into an argument when he finds out she’s been lying to him.

The next day, Loretta tells Stella that Kennedy can’t play with Cindy anymore. Kennedy had called Cindy the n-word. Loretta cuts off their friendship as well. Three days later, a brick gets thrown through the Walkers’ window, complements of the homeowners association president, Percy White . Soon, a flaming bag of dog shit is left on their porch and another brick goes flying. By March, the Walkers have moved out.

Part IV: The Stage Door (1982)

In 1982, Jude is working as a waitress at Park’s Korean Barbecue while applying for medical school. Reese is now working at a Kodak store. They are both constantly strapped for cash. Jude still thinks a lot about the woman she saw at the party. The woman looked like her mother, and Jude wonders if it was Stella. Jude was fired after dropping the wine.

In November 1982, Barry gets a spot in the chorus line of a small musical comedy show, called The Midnight Marauders , at the Stardust Theater . One of the other cast members is the girl with the violet eyes that Jude had met at that party, which turns out to be Kennedy. They recognize each other. Jude returns later to talk to Kennedy. Kennedy dropped out of USC to pursue acting, to her parents’ displeasure, and Jude manages to get Kennedy to confirm that her mother is Stella.

Meanwhile, Stella is now an adjunct professor, teaching Introduction to Statistics at Santa Monica College . Stella was depressed after Loretta left, and Blake had suggested taking a class to get her mind off things. Her GED class led to her pursuing an associates degree at Santa Monica college, which segued into a full four-year degree at Loyola Marymount University . Stella is now considering getting a masters or a PhD to become a full-fledged professor. She also meets up with Kennedy to try to convince her to go back to school.

Jude joins the Stardust Theater as an usher, in hopes of getting to know Kennedy. The other cast members consider Kennedy to be a spoiled brat, but Jude longs to hear anything about Stella. Reese thinks it’s a bad idea, but Jude has spent her whole life watching her mother pine over the idea of having Stella back.

At the final show, Stella shows up. Jude follows her during intermission and tells her she’s Desiree’s daughter. Stella tells Jude it was another life and leaves quickly, not staying for the rest of the show. Afterwards, Kennedy is upset that her mother didn’t show up and drunkenly insults Jude. Angrily, Jude tells her the truth about Stella and Mallard.

The next day, Stella tells Kennedy she was there in the beginning and how well she did. Kennedy brings up Mallard to her, but Stella denies knowing anything about it. Pre-emptively, Stella tells Blake about some girl claiming to be Kennedy’s cousin, which he dismisses as someone hoping for a payday.

Stella and Blake give Kennedy one year to try the acting thing with them paying her rent. Afterwards, she’ll have to get a job or go back to school. As they move her in, Stella slips up and mentions sharing her apartment in New Orleans, and Kennedy expresses frustration over how secretive Stella is about her life.

Part V: Pacific Cove (1985/1988)

By 1988, Kennedy is 27 and has resigned herself to being a soap opera actress, with a three-season arc on a show called Pacific Cove. Back when Jude had told her about Mallard, Kennedy had recognized the name immediately. Stella had told her the truth once when she was very young, though she denied it later, claiming to be from Opelousas , instead.

In 1985, Kennedy ran into Jude again. At the time, she was in New York, dating a physics professor at Columbia named Frantz and the first black man she’d dated, and she was in an off-off-Broadway musical. Jude had seen the flyers, showed up and gave Kennedy the number for their hotel room. Jude and Reese are in New York for Reese’s surgery. Kennedy is unfriendly, but talks to her, and reluctantly agrees to meet up after her show.

Jude and Reese attend the show, and afterwards Jude gives Kennedy a photograph of their mothers, with Adele standing between them. Kennedy is upset at first, but tracks down Jude at the hospital the next day to talk and waits with her for Reese to wake from surgery. Kennedy later shows Stella the photo, who still refuses to admit it’s her. She also breaks up with Frantz soon after.

By the early 1990’s, Kennedy’s acting career is effectively over, so she gets a real estate license. She turns out to be quite good at selling houses.

Part VI: Places (1986)

Around 1981, the U.S. Geological Survey determined that Mallard is to small to be a town and redrew the boundaries so that became a part of the city of Palmetto .

In 1986, Stella is headed back to Mallard-now-Palmetto while Blake is in Boston on a business trip. She hasn’t seen Kennedy since the day with the photograph when Kennedy accused her of being incapable of telling the truth. Afterwards, Kennedy moved to Europe to figure things out. Stella’s plan is to talk to Desiree so she’ll tell Jude to leave Kennedy alone.

Desiree is still at Lou’s, but now she runs the place. Desiree wonders why Reese hasn’t married Jude yet. But Reese assures her that he loves Jude, and Desiree believes him. They now live in Minnesota, where Jude is attending medical school, and Reese works as a freelance photographer for the Minnesota Daily Star .

Big Ceel has recently died, stabbed over $40 and a card game. Early now works a proper job at the oil refinery instead, and he helps take care of Adele, who has Alzheimer’s. One day, he takes Adele out fishing and when they gets back, Stella is sitting out front. In her decreased mental state, Adele barely reacts. They tell Stella to go fetch Desiree.

Stella finds Desiree at Lou’s. Desiree is angry at first, but Stella asks for forgiveness and hugs her, and they go home and catch up. When the topic of Jude and Kennedy come up, things get tense. Stella doesn’t want to ever tell Kennedy the truth, and Desiree reluctantly accept that they’ve gone down different paths. That night, Stella tries to sneak out, but Early hears her and drives her to the bus stop. Stella hands him her wedding ring to sell for money to take care of Adele.

Soon after, Kennedy finally says she is moving home, and Stella goes to fetch her from the airport. When Kennedy asks about the missing ring, Stella is glad for Kennedy to be back and too tired of lying, so she just tells her the truth. As they drive home, Stella tells Kennedy everything, and Kennedy agrees not to say anything to her father.

Adele passes away, so Jude books a flight back home. Jude and Kennedy are still in touch, unbeknownst to their mothers, so Jude tells Kennedy. Reese goes with Jude too, and Early picks them up. Afterwards, Desiree and Early move to Houston. Desiree gets a job at a call center, and Early works at the Conoco refinery. When Desiree tells Jude about the move and about living a “big life” like her sister, Jude (who spent her youth wondering about what her life would have been like with her father or with Stella as a mother) tells her that’s she’s glad she’s not like Stella, and that she’s “glad I ended up with you.”

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Very helpful in keeping various characters in order.

The summary was the most helpful in connecting the dots on each character. I cannot wait to read more of the novel. At this time,I do not wish to share my personal name and email. Must now more about Patreon before becoming a member.

Helpful but one detail…it was not JFK, JR. who was shot soon after MLK, it was JFK’s younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy.

eeek thank you for that correction, it’s been updated!

Thx for the helpful summary. I will consider becoming a member.

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A Novel Imagines the Fate of Twin Sisters, One Passing for White

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By Ayana Mathis

• Published May 29, 2020 Updated Nov. 23, 2020

THE VANISHING HALF By Brit Bennett

Brit Bennett’s new novel, “The Vanishing Half,” grapples with that American racial chimera known as passing for white. Bennett asks: What is the cost, to an individual and to a community, of the passing person’s estrangement from family, friends, culture and identity — all sacrificed to maintain an assumed whiteness? What toll might such a decision take on those left behind in blackness? With great ambition, Bennett explores these questions through 20 years in the lives of twin sisters, Desiree and Stella Vignes, one of whom chooses to pass while the other does not.

[The editors of The Times Book Review chose the 10 best books of 2020 .]

In 1954, Desiree and Stella disappear from their home in tiny Mallard, La. Sixteen years old and already pressed into domestic service for a white family, the girls run away to New Orleans. Fourteen years later, Desiree returns home just as suddenly as she left, sans Stella but with a dark-skinned child in tow. News spreads fast, but the truth is more banal, and more heartbreaking, than the townspeople’s gossipy suppositions: The child is Desiree’s daughter, Jude, the product of an abusive marriage to a man in Washington, D.C.

Mallard is at once repulsed and intrigued by this little girl, described as “blueblack” — “like she flown direct from Africa.” People in the town live by a strict color code: All are descendants of the mixed-race light-skinned man who founded the place “for men like him, who would never be accepted as white but refused to be treated like Negroes.” In Mallard, “nobody married dark.”

As Desiree settles back into her childhood home, she is haunted anew by her twin sister’s absence. Stella vanished from the girls’ New Orleans apartment leaving nothing but a note: “ Sorry, honey, but I’ve got to go my own way. ” In Mallard, Desiree searches for Stella with the help of a rekindled old flame, a bounty hunter named Early Jones. Curiously, Stella is untraceable, despite Early’s detective skills.

In due time, we discover that by 1968 Stella — now Stella Sanders — is living as a white woman in Brentwood, Calif., married to a wealthy white man with whom she’s had a daughter named Kennedy. We meet Stella on the precipice of crisis: A black family is poised to move into all-white Brentwood. “Would they see her for what she was?” Stella wonders. “Or rather, what she wasn’t?”

To grasp the full measure of Stella’s position, we must consider the concept of hypodescent, colloquially known as the “one-drop rule.” This codification of racial identity stipulated that people possessing any African or African-American blood were black, regardless of appearance or parentage. The “one-drop rule” is foundational to all legislation around segregation in America, from the Jim Crow South to the de facto segregation of the North. A Louisiana court upheld the law as recently as 1985 . Hypodescent continues to inform our understanding of who is black and who isn’t , and who has the right to the privileges of whiteness. And with it came the insidious notion that a passing person has acted fraudulently in order to partake in freedoms she should not have.

The subject of passing has an impressive literary legacy. In 1929, the Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen explored it in her novel “Passing”; her light-skinned female central characters come to no good end, done in by racism and good old-fashioned patriarchy. Bennett’s novel, written some 90 years later, has a third-wave feminist bent and steers clear of old narratives about biracial women — chief among them that of the “tragic mulatta,” which is just what it sounds like. Desiree flees her violent husband, falls in love with Early but never marries him because, well, she doesn’t want to. Stella, after many years as a dutiful housewife, discovers a love of statistics — and feminism — and pursues degrees in mathematics despite her husband’s whiny disapproval.

In Stella, Bennett balances the literary demands of dynamic characterization with the historical and social realities of her subject matter. Stella is hard to like: Her choice to cut herself off from blackness is a psychic suicide that leaves her empty, lacking in empathy and bigoted. When she discovers Kennedy playing with the newly arrived black neighbor’s child, she rushes across the street and snatches her daughter away “because we don’t play with niggers.”

In stark contrast, Desiree is left to contend with a slew of black women’s burdens: She works long hours for little pay at Mallard’s only diner; she cares for her mother, who eventually develops Alzheimer’s disease; she loses Jude to brighter prospects thousands of miles away, as did so many black Southern mothers whose children decamped for the North and West. Despite these hardships, Desiree is a woman with agency and a clear sense of the compromises she’s made to ensure her well-being: “She’d made a sort of life for herself here, hadn’t she? … No surprises, no sudden anger, no man holding her one moment, then hitting her the next. Now life was steady.”

The novel, Bennett’s first after her much admired debut, “ The Mothers ,” might well have stayed with these women in whom there is such depth, possibility and dramatic propulsion. Instead, it switches focus to their daughters and in so doing loses vitality. After graduating from high school, Jude arrives in Los Angeles on a track scholarship to U.C.L.A. A gig with a catering company takes her to a party in Brentwood, where she serves her cousin Kennedy (unbeknown to either at the time) and catches a fleeting glimpse of Stella. The sighting vexes her until she meets Kennedy again a few years later, when, somewhat improbably, she attends a small theater production in which Kennedy happens to have a role. Their relationship moves forward in fits and starts, facilitated by plot convolutions that bring them into proximity.

Jude is obsessed with her vanished aunt and dazzled by Kennedy, who treats her with breezy disdain. But it seems Jude’s real concerns are elsewhere — money problems, her medical school applications, her boyfriend and his challenges as a transgender man in the 1970s and ’80s. Within the realm of Jude’s experience, her long lost Aunt Stella is family lore , a shadow. When Jude wonders, “How could she leave the people who still longed for her, years later, and never even look back?” we get the sense that the question belongs to Desiree, not Jude, however much the novel labors to force the weight of the past onto her young shoulders.

In Kennedy’s case, the stakes are more straightforward. Stella’s choices create a void where the past ought to be. Kennedy’s relationship with her is strained. In a scene late in the novel, Kennedy confronts Stella with evidence of her true identity, but Stella is impassive, as always. “She just expected her mother to feel something. … Kennedy deserved that, didn’t she? One moment of honesty.”

These inspired moments aside, as a character Kennedy is a bit flat, the spoiled rich white girl straight out of central casting, self-pitying and little altered by the events of her life. Toward the end of the novel, sexual role-play with a black lover leads Kennedy to recall the childhood incident in which she, like her mother, called her black Brentwood playmate the N-word. “Saying the word to him was different than saying it to Cindy. Wasn’t it?” Well, no, but Kennedy doesn’t dwell on this long. It isn’t a miraculous evolution that’s wanting, but a more thorough examination of Kennedy’s stagnation. The novel fails to imagine meaningful story lines or compelling links between the young women and their mothers’ burdens. As a result, their sections struggle to find momentum and weight.

Despite these shortcomings, “The Vanishing Half” is a brave foray into vast and difficult terrain. It is about racial identity, of course, and three generations of mother-daughter relationships. It is also about a particularly American existential conflict — the tension between personal freedom and responsibility to a community. The novel raises thorny questions about the cost of blackness. The answers are complicated: Desiree and her daughter emerge intact. Desiree has a sense of belonging to a place and a people, and a fully developed identity. Certainly, Stella fares better by every possible socioeconomic measure, but she and Kennedy are shipwrecked, bobbing in open water, even if their life rafts are bejeweled. It would seem that it isn’t quite possible to stop being black in America, no matter how hard you try.

Ayana Mathis is the author of “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie.”

THE VANISHING HALF By Brit Bennett 343 pp. Riverhead Books. $27.

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The Vanishing Half Summary, Review And Key Themes

“The Vanishing Half” is a multigenerational saga spanning from the 1950s to the late 1990s, and traversing multiple geographies.

Penned by Brit Bennet, it talks about the intricate and deeply interconnected lives of the Vignes sisters, Desiree and Stella, and their divergent paths as they navigate the complex landscape of race, identity, and societal expectations.

The Vanishing Half Summary

The story primarily revolves around identical twin sisters Desiree and Stella Vignes who grow apart due to different life choices. Desiree returns to her hometown Mallard with her dark-skinned daughter Jude, while Stella passes as a white woman, marrying a white man, and distancing herself from her past. 

Jude, while studying in Los Angeles, encounters Kennedy, Stella’s daughter, and eventually, the truth about Stella’s secret unfolds. Despite conflicts and challenges, the narrative converges on themes of identity, race, familial ties, and the longing for acceptance. 

Stella and Desiree’s lives intersect once again when Stella visits Mallard. The novel ends with Jude and her partner Reese, but what they are up to, you need to read the whole novel to find out. 

Also Read: The Lincoln Highway Summary And Key Lessons

The Vanishing Half Review

In an era characterized by a global conversation about identity, race, and belonging, Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half appears not just timely but profoundly insightful as well. This novel, crisscrossing generations and geographies, is an exploration of identity in all its glorious complexity.

The narrative unfolds between the 1950s and the late 1990s, a period of enormous social transformation, from the small, pigment-conscious town of Mallard to metropolises such as New York and Los Angeles. 

At its heart, the novel follows the lives of two twin sisters, Desiree and Stella, who follow divergent paths, one embracing her Black heritage and the other passing as white. 

The ramifications of these choices echo through their daughters, Kennedy and Jude, who both grapple with their own questions of identity.

Bennett’s style is smooth, and her prose is filled with precise detail and subtle metaphor, offering layers of complexity to seemingly simple events and dialogues. The transition between time periods and locations is handled with an agility that allows us to engage fully in the richness of the varied settings.

The strength of “The Vanishing Half” lies in its characters, who are fleshed out with such authenticity and humanity that they leap off the page. The depiction of Stella’s inner turmoil, Desiree’s boldness, Jude’s ambitions, and Kennedy’s restlessness brings forth the theme of duality, not only in race but in identity itself. It reminds us that identity is not monolithic; it’s fluid, multifaceted, and often contradictory.

Some of the novel’s most poignant moments come through in the delicate handling of relationships , such as the friendship between Stella and her neighbor Loretta Walker, marked by secrecy, guilt, and unspoken understanding. The complex relationship dynamics reflect a broader societal structure, and Bennett doesn’t shy away from addressing the intricacies of race, gender, and class.

However, it’s in the spaces between characters where the novel truly shines. In juxtaposing the lives of the twins, their daughters, and the men and women they interact with, Bennett invites us to ponder what it means to be oneself, what we gain and lose in the roles we choose or are thrust upon us. There’s an existential search imbued in these pages that echoes far beyond the particularities of race.

Perhaps the only criticism that may arise is that the novel’s ambition at times overreaches, introducing characters and subplots that, while enriching the narrative, might divert from the central story. 

However, this is a minor issue in what is otherwise a masterfully executed work.

In “The Vanishing Half,” Bennett has crafted a novel that is not only a gripping family saga but a mirror held up to America, reflecting the multifarious nature of identity, the weight of heritage, and the often unspoken realities of race. 

It’s a tale that feels universal yet deeply personal, one that we bibibliphiles will find ourselves returning to, caught in the reflective gaze of its profound questions.

A poignant and thoughtful exploration of what binds us and divides us, The Vanishing Half stands as a testament to the power of storytelling, and a triumphant addition to contemporary American literature. 

It’s a book not just to be read but to be reckoned with.

Also Read: Dune Summary, Review And Key Lessons

1. The Complexity of Identity and the Consequences of Denial

The novel delves into the complexities of racial identity and the psychological turmoil it can bring. 

Stella’s decision to pass as white illustrates how societal pressures can compel individuals to deny their true selves. This denial leads to a life filled with deceit, fear, and detachment, not only affecting Stella but also her daughter, Kennedy. 

The concealment of her true identity leads to an estrangement with her twin sister Desiree and her daughter’s struggle to understand her heritage. 

This underscores the importance of embracing one’s identity and the harmful consequences that can arise from rejecting it.

2. The Interconnectedness of Generations and the Enduring Impact of Choices

Through the multi-generational narrative, the novel demonstrates how the choices made by one generation can reverberate through subsequent generations. 

The sisters’ decision to leave Mallard and take different paths in life impacts their children, Jude and Kennedy, in profound ways. For example, Desiree’s decision to return to Mallard shapes Jude’s upbringing , while Stella’s choice to pass as white influences Kennedy’s understanding of race and identity. 

The choices and secrets of the characters create a web that connects them all, leading to Kennedy’s discovery of her mother’s past and Jude’s search for family. 

This highlights the enduring impact that individual decisions can have on family dynamics and personal growth.

3. The Power of Forgiveness and the Possibility of Redemption

Throughout the novel, themes of forgiveness and redemption are explored. 

Despite years of deception and separation , the reunion between Stella and Desiree illustrates the potential for understanding, compassion, and reconciliation. Stella’s return to Mallard and her heartfelt conversation with Desiree signal her longing for redemption and acknowledgment of her past mistakes. 

Moreover, Stella’s decision to finally open up to Kennedy about her life represents a step towards healing and truth . 

These instances emphasize that it’s never too late to seek forgiveness and that even deeply entrenched wounds can begin to heal with empathy and love.

Final thoughts

For bibliophiles who aim to delve into topics of racial identity, societal pressures, familial bonds, and personal redemption, a must-read. For those who seek more thrill and suspense in a novel, you can skip it altogether. 

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The Vanishing Half

Brit bennett, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

The Vanishing Half: Introduction

The vanishing half: plot summary, the vanishing half: detailed summary & analysis, the vanishing half: themes, the vanishing half: quotes, the vanishing half: characters, the vanishing half: symbols, the vanishing half: theme wheel, brief biography of brit bennett.

Historical Context of The Vanishing Half

Other books related to the vanishing half.

• Full Title: The Vanishing Half
• When Published: June 2, 2020
• Literary Period: Contemporary
• Genre: Novel, Historical Fiction
• Setting: Louisiana, California, and New York in the mid-to-late 20th century. 
• Climax: When Kennedy sees Jude in New York, Jude gives her a photograph of their mothers as children, proving once and for all that Kennedy’s mother, Stella, isn’t actually white.
• Antagonist: Racism

Extra Credit for The Vanishing Half

Adaptation. Brit Bennett has teamed up with the poet Aziza Barnes and the playwright Jeremy O. Harris to adapt The Vanishing Half as a limited television series for HBO.

Awards. The Vanishing Half won the Goodreads Choice Award for Historical Fiction and was included on the longlist for the National Book Awards.

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Vanishing Half (Bennett)

The Vanishing Half   Brit Bennett, 2020 Penguin Publishing 352 pp. ISBN-13: 9780525536291 Summary From the 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. ( From the publisher .)

Author Bio • Birth—ca. 1989-90 • Raised—Oceanside, California, USA • Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., University of Michigan • Currently—lives in Encino, California Brit Bennett is an American author whose debut novel, The Mothers , was published in 2016. The novel is a coming-of-age story surrounding a trio of black teens growing up in southern California. Bennett grew up in Oceanside in southern California. She is the youngest of three sisters. Their father was Oceanside's first black city attorney, and their mother a finger-print analyst for the country sheriff's department. Bennett recalls herself as a serious, driven child, who started writing when she was 7 or 8. Her efforts resulted in a play about a coyote and short story about a Native American boy whose home is destroyed. While she was only 17, she began writing The Mothers —she was the same age as the book's protagonist, Nadia Turner. Like Nadia, Bennett was smart and ambitious and eager to get out of the city where she grew up.

My mom grew up sharecropping in Louisiana, and my dad grew up in South Central L.A., and both of them were able to scratch and claw and go to college, so what’s my excuse ?

Bennett did leave town. She attended Stanford University, where she received her B.A. in English. Later, she earned an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan. Bennett says she felt out of place in Michigan—she was a southern California girl suffering through Midwestern winters and wrestling with the culture shock of being in a mostly white environment. At the time that Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, were killed at the hands of the police, Bennett was completing a writing fellowship at Michigan. Not long after the court cases absolved the policemen involved in the killings, Bennett wrote an essay for the webwite Jezebel, entitled "I Don't Know What to Do With Good White People." The essay was viewed more than 1 million times in 3 days and drew the attention of a literary agent who emailed her wanting to know if Bennett wanted to write a book. The rest is history. ( Adapted from a New York Times article .)

Book Reviews Bennett is a remarkably assured writer who mostly sidesteps the potential for melodrama inherent in a form built upon secrecy and revelation. The past laps at the present in short flashbacks, never weighing down the quick current of a story that covers almost 20 years….  [T]he pages fairly turn themselves… in a book about suppressed lineages…. As old as the story of passing may be, so too is the effort… to capture its complicated desire. Parul Sehgal-New York Times I don't think I've read a book that covers passing in the way that this one does… epic. Oprah Magazine   Not to be missed. Harper’s Bazaar Here, in her sensitive, elegant prose, [Bennett] evokes both the strife of racism, and what it does to a person even if they can evade some of its elements. Vogue This is sure to be one of 2020’s best and boldest…. A tale of family, identity, race, history, and perception, Bennett’s next masterpiece is a triumph of character-driven narrative. Elle Worth an early pre-order. It's a curvy, looping story… a fitting complement to her debut book, 2017's The Mothers . I gobbled this up. Bustle ( Starred review ) Impressive…. Bennett renders her characters and their struggles with great compassion, and explores the complicated state of mind that Stella finds herself in while passing as white. This prodigious follow-up surpasses Bennett’s formidable debut. Publishers Weekly Bennett here features identical twin sisters, who at age 16 run away from their small, black, 1950s Southern town and take different paths, one passing for white. What's key is the relationship between their daughters Library Journal ( Starred review ) Bennett keeps all these plot threads thrumming and her social commentary crisp. In the second half, Jude spars with her cousin Kennedy, Stella's daughter, a spoiled actress. Kin find "each other’s lives inscrutable" in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed. Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions  1. Stella and Desiree Vignes grow up identical and, as children, inseparable. Later, they are not only separated, but lost to each other, completely out of contact. What series of events and experiences leads to this division and why? Was it inevitable, after their growing up so indistinct from each other? 2. When did you notice cracks between the twins begin to form? Do you understand why Stella made the choice she did? What did Stella have to give up, in order to live a different kind of life? Was it necessary to leave Desiree behind? Do you think Stella ultimately regrets her choices? What about Desiree? 3. Consider the various forces that shape the twins into the people they become, and the forces that later shape their respective daughters. In the creation of an individual identity or sense of self, how much influence do you think comes from upbringing, geography, race, gender, class, education? Which of these are mutable and why? Have you ever taken on or discarded aspects of your own identity? 4. Kennedy is born with everything handed to her, Jude with comparatively little. What impact do their relative privileges have on the people they become? How does it affect their relationships with their mothers and their understanding of home? How does it influence the dynamic between them? 5. The town of Mallard is small in size but looms large in the personal histories of its residents. How does the history of this town and its values affect the twins and their parents; how does it affect “outsiders” like Early and later Jude? Do you understand why Desiree decides to return there as an adult? What does the depiction of Mallard say about who belongs to what communities, and how those communities are formed and enforced? 6. Many of the characters are engaged in a kind of performance at some point in the story. Kennedy makes a profession of acting, and ultimately her fans blur the line between performance and reality when they confuse her with her soap opera character. Barry performs on stage in theatrical costumes that he then removes for his daytime life. Reese takes on a new wardrobe and role, but it isn’t a costume. One could say that Stella’s whole marriage and neighborhood life is a kind of performance. What is the author saying about the roles we perform in the world? Do you ever feel you are performing a role rather than being yourself? How does that compare to what some of these characters are doing? Consider the distinction between performance, reinvention, and transformation in respect to the different characters in the book. 7. Desiree’s job as a fingerprint analyst in Washington DC is to use scientific methods to identify people through physical, genetic details. Why do you think the author chose this as a profession for her character? Where else do you see this theme of identity and identification in the book? 8. Compare and contrast the love relationships in the novel –Desiree and Early, Stella and Blake, and Reese and Jude. What are their separate relationships with the truth? How much does telling the truth or obscuring it play a part in the functionality of a relationship? How much does the past matter in each case? 9. What does Stella feel she has to lose in California, if she reveals her true identity to her family and her community? When Loretta, a black woman, moves in across the street, what does she represent for Stella? What do Stella’s interactions with Loretta tell us about Stella’s commitment to her new identity? ( Questions issued by the publisher .)

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Book Reviews

'the vanishing half' counts the terrible costs of bigotry and secrecy.

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Brit Bennett's first novel, The Mothers, was the sort of smashingly successful debut that can make but also possibly break a young writer by raising expectations and pressure. Four years later, her second, The Vanishing Half, more than lives up to her early promise. It's an even better book, more expansive yet also deeper, a multi-generational family saga that tackles prickly issues of racial identity and bigotry and conveys the corrosive effects of secrets and dissembling. It's also a great read that will transport you out of your current circumstances, whatever they are.

Spanning nearly half a century, from the 1940s to the 1990s, the novel focuses on twin sisters, Desiree and Stella Vignes, who were raised in Mallard, Louisiana, a (fictional) small town conceived of by their great-great-great grandfather — after being freed by the father who once owned him — as an exclusive place for light-skinned blacks like him. "In Mallard, nobody married dark," Bennett writes starkly. Over time, its prejudices deepened as its population became lighter and lighter, "like a cup of coffee steadily diluted with cream." The twins, with their "creamy skin, hazel eyes, wavy hair," would have delighted the town's founder.

Yet fair skin did not save their father, whose vicious lynching by a gang of white men marks the girls irrevocably. Nor did it save their mother from an impoverished existence cleaning for rich white people in a neighboring town, and it won't save the twins from an equally constricted life if they stay in Mallard. We learn in the first few pages that at 16, Desiree and Stella ran off to New Orleans, two hours away, but "after a year, the twins scattered, their lives splitting as evenly as their shared egg. Stella became white and Desiree married the darkest man she could find."

Ordinary Black Lives Are What Matter In 'The Mothers'

Author Interviews

Pregnancy is personal, not political, in 'the mothers'.

Novels about racial passing — including Nella Larsen's Passing (1929) and Philip Roth's The Human Stain — have been a recurrent feature in American literature. But unlike here, they usually involve retribution for what is regarded as an unforgivable moral transgression. In The Vanishing Half, Bennett also draws on another, even more widespread literary tradition: Twins. From Shakespeare's Twelfth Night to Cathleen Schine's The Grammarians, duos have served as a useful device for exploring issues of nature versus nurture, mistaken identity, double trouble, and the divided self. In addition, Bennett addresses the devastations of abandonment (also a prominent theme in The Mothers) through the particular pain of a twin losing her other half.

Bennett chose to narrate her first novel, somewhat trickily, by the eponymous mothers, a gossipy sort of Greek chorus of older but not wiser churchwomen who follow the twists and turns of the young protagonist's life as if it were a soap opera. The Vanishing Half is written in a more conventional tight third person, shifting between characters and generations – primarily Desiree and Stella and their daughters, one "blueblack" dark, one blonde, one smart and grounded, the other spoiled and lost. The episodes jump around in time, mainly between the late 1950s through the 1980s, following the complex sequencing of an underlying narrative logic that makes sense.

Like The Mothers, this novel keeps you turning pages not just to find out what happens — or how it happened — but to find out more about who these people are. Bennett is interested in the unanticipated consequences of life-changing decisions, the insidious tolls of racial bigotry and passing, the frustration of inscrutable mothers, the differences between acting and lying. Her characters are forever calculating what's lost and what's gained at each turn, what vanishes and what remains. They ponder how some people can be two different people in one lifetime or even one hour, transforming from one sex to another, from loving husband to vicious wife-beater, from black to white.

Driven by a decades-long search for the lost sister, the plot hinges on multiple coincidences that sometimes strain credulity. But Bennett mostly has us in her pocket. Her voice is assured, her images and observations rich. "Telling Stella a secret was like whispering into a jar and screwing the lid tight," she writes from Desiree's perspective, to whom it hasn't yet occurred that her sister might harbor secrets of her own. A death in the family hits one character "in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles," Bennett writes, and then adds this clincher: "You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same."

It's a rare gift to be able to dig beyond the dirt and gossip of lives viewed superficially to get to the inner human story, to delve beyond the sensational into difficult issues, and to view flawed characters with understanding rather than judgment or condemnation. Toni Morrison's influence is evident in these pages, from a slur Desiree's dark-skinned daughter suffers that echoes the title of Morrison's novel Tar Baby , to the ability to convey both the brutal realities of racism and the beautiful wonders of love.

In The Mothers , Bennett's narrators describe how they put themselves in others' shoes and take up their burdens in order to pray for them. "If you don't become them, even for a second, a prayer is nothing but words," these ultra-empathizers explain. The same, of course, can be said of writers and their characters. Bennett's are never just words.

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The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett review – two faces of the black experience

A light-skinned twin sister constructs a new identity as a white woman in a clever novel that confounds expectations

N orth American literature is rich with dramatic tales of light-skinned black protagonists who attempt to “pass” for white. At their peak in the 1920s – whether in Nella Larsen’s Passing or Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun – these mostly young women wrestled with the fear of being uncovered while being seduced by the rewards of freedom from the perceived stain of blackness.

Brit Bennett ’s intriguing new novel, The Vanishing Half , amplifies the trope of the “tragic mulatto” (a self-loathing mixed-race American) by sharing the dilemma of “passing” with identical twin characters, Stella and Desiree. In 1950s America the teenagers disappear from Mallard, a fictional small, racially homogeneous and snobbish “coloured” town in Louisiana, and embark on lives marked by opposing trajectories.

The novel opens with Desiree, now in her 20s, returning with a dark-skinned child, Jude, in tow, setting townsfolk tongues wagging over how something “that black coulda come out of Desiree”. Stella doesn’t come back; she, it’s subsequently revealed, has managed to blend into suburban Los Angeles, having married Blake, a white man unsuspecting of her phenotype.

It wasn’t just the boredom of a stultifying town that propelled the twins’ departure; there was also the tragedy of their father to contend with. Desiree recalls he had skin “so light that, on a cold morning, she could turn over his arm to see the blue of his veins. But none of that mattered when the white men came for him.” The foreshadowing barely prepares you for the shock of the young girls witnessing their father’s casual murder by racists jealous of his entrepreneurship.

When the teenage sisters first flee Mallard, they end up in New Orleans. Their lives there take on a note of desperation, with echoes of Tennessee Williams’s A Street car Named Desire . Barely able to pay the rent on their ramshackle accommodation, they are temporarily dependent on the kindness of strangers. Desiree is the more pragmatic; her twin mirrors Blanche DuBois in her pretensions, before transitioning to “white”, when she starts dating Blake and moves to LA.

The omniscient authorial voice is gentle and compassionate in a tale that inverts and confounds expectations. The extrovert Desiree is also a homing bird who returns to her sleepy home town. Her shy sister turns out to be more adventurous and sheds her family as easily as a snake shedding its skin. Though Stella comes to feel “a secret transgression was even more thrilling than a shared one”, she lives on amber alert in fear of her fabricated story unravelling.

Bennett ably shows the superficiality of suburban civility. Come crunch time, the attitude of the comfortable residents of upper-middle-class Brentwood, LA, is little different from Louisiana bigotry. When an upwardly mobile African American family moves into a house opposite Stella, she takes tentative steps towards establishing a friendship. But other neighbours greet them with bricks through their windows and faeces on their doorstep.

A decade later, propelled by coincidences, the twins’ teenage children, Jude (dark-skinned, bookish caterer) and Kennedy (golden-haired, sports-car driving hedonist), meet at a cocktail party, and, though ignorant of each other, piece together the puzzle of their mothers’ relationship. They, too, are challenged by notions of true identity. Jude, who understands the impulse to transform oneself (having failed to lighten her skin), is enthralled by Reese, her boyfriend, who’s transitioning from woman to man; and Kennedy, crossing the colour line herself, comes to realise that “loving a black man [Frantz] only made her feel whiter than before”.

The Vanishing Half may seem old-fashioned but it’s cleverly constructed to both match and critique the conservativism of the 1950s and 60s: the attenuated tone chimes with the restrained language and style of the period. Ultimately, it’s a quietly damning account of acquiescing to an imitation of life and the delusion of the American dream.

• The Observer

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