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. 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. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' story lines intersect? Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. 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. Brit Bennett has written the kind of book that will make you want to start a book club just so you’ll have people to talk to about it.The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. The Vanishing Half hooks you from the first chapter. Whether you feel yourself identifying more with Desiree, Stella, or their daughters, Jude and Kennedy, the literary device of time jumping and the author’s talent for character development keep you engaged every page of the way. In the years that follow, Desiree moves to DC and marries a dark-skinned Black man, while Stella marries and moves among elite circles on the West Coast.īrit Bennett tells a genuine American story – one of secrecy, bigotry, and colorism – and the societal and family ties that connect them. Soon after starting the job, Stella disappears leaving her sister and mother heartbroken. When Stella interviews for a secretarial position there, a supervisor assumes she is white. Bored with small-town life at sixteen, the twins take off for New Orleans. In the 1940s, young Desiree and Stella witnessed the brutal lynching of their father by a gang of white men. Identical twins Desiree and Stella Vignes and most of the Black folks who live in the Deep South town where the The Vanishing Half is first set, are so light-skinned they could pass for white. Coming-of-age, racial identity, and family secrets are ever-present themes in this powerful and poignant narrative. His mother refused to admit she was white while raising her children with her Black minister husband.
A superbly crafted exploration of race, identity, and family. McBride writes with charm and humor about his family of twelve children living in the projects in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
0 kommentar(er)
