I picked up The Vanishing Half in the middle of winter at my local pharmacy. I have to admit I didn’t expect to find something I’d actually want to read there. Since I was doing a Publishing course at the time I was thinking about where, how and why books get sold. I had seen it repeatedly popping up on my new-at-the-time Bookstagram and on my Goodreads, so I was excited to see it at the shop for publishing reasons and because I had really wanted to read it.
Coming out of my last read, which was an audiobook based on a fictional historical rock band, it was also nice to get to fully immerse in something more thoughtful like The Vanishing Half. This one is quite a long read and it has a lot going on in it.
Before reading the book or this review, please be mindful of your triggers.
CW for strong themes: racism, colourism, domestic violence, generational trauma
Premise
The Vanishing Half takes us on a journey through the lives of five women spread out over time. The story opens with the lives of the identical Vigne twins, Desiree and Stella. Their mother is Adele, who is a fair-skinned black woman living in a fictional town in Louisiana called Mallard. The year is 1968. The people that inhabit Mallard are white-passing black folks. The Vigne twins are no different from their parents in this manner. Fair warning that the rest of this article will contain spoilers.
Eventually we find that Desiree longs to leave Mallard and convinces Stella to join her. They move close by at first, to one of the nearest big cities. As the twin that is more anxious yet more grounded into community, no one expects that it is Stella who vanishes one night, leaving Desiree and Mallard behind for the rest of her life.
The narrator then follows each of them through their love lives, their choices and their opportunities as they age, marry and give birth. Desiree’s daughter, Jude, is a dark-skinned, hardworking athlete who aims to become a doctor. Stella’s white daughter is Kennedy, a flighty actress who never quite knows what she wants.
First Impressions
As I was reading The Vanishing Half I thought about how the narrator isn’t a detached observer, but really entrenched into her own biases. I think this is interesting, because it highlights how actively engaged story tellers are. Everything we know comes to us through a lens and is internalized through our own lens. The narrator repeatedly tells us to collectively embrace Mallard’s belief systems. This device repeats through-out the book, as we hear the colourism and internalized racism of the Mallard residents and those who descended from them. Anyone too dark is suspicious, unappealing and trouble for others. This idea becomes staunchly at the forefront of Stella’s decisions and behaviours, as she leaves Desiree behind to take advantage of her ability to pass as white.
Vanishing into Whiteness
This notion of vanishing into whiteness is an intriguing idea to me. In the Americas this is especially common, as many white people have black or native lineages they are unaware of or they are in denial of. It also comes with an erasure that was already present. If American black slaves were stripped of their identity upon arrival onto this soil, every time we move forward into mainstream American culture, or into whiteness, we strip away that identity further.
This book uses a very visual representation of whiteness to help us see it as it happens. The whiter the town, residents, or descendants of Mallard become, the more anti-black they become. They also become more distraught and resistant to the idea of being black at all, as we see with Kennedy.
Anti-blackness as Survival Mechanism
To the Mallard residents anti-blackness comes with two opposing beliefs:
- Dark skin is something to fear and abhor.
- White people can still hurt Mallard residents, regardless of how fair they are.
This fear is obvious in the repeated nightmares Stella has about her father as he’s dragged outside and killed by what sounds like random white men. She has these even while living as a white person, and raising a white child. Later in the book she says to Desiree that it was this privilege that guided her decision to live as a white person. That it was about getting to do the things she wanted to in the world and be valued for them, to live a middle class (or even upper class) life. It was about freedom.
Author’s Choices
I found it neat how Bennett leaned into opposites with Jude and Kennedy’s personality traits. Jude is hardworking, ambitious and interested in love. Kennedy is avoidant of true closeness, unsure of her direction, and interested in fame though never driven by it. Given their backgrounds, it would make sense that someone born into struggle would want stability and someone born into wealth would want several unspecific things. Though, they both struggle with their own internal psychological issues, Jade with insecurity and Kennedy with feeling lied to by her mother her whole life.
Lastly, I want to add that the way Bennett takes command of the story is incredibly convincing. Her storytelling is powerful and confronting. This is a difficult read and will bring up so much for those reading it. I highly recommend it to those interested in reading more black literature or about black experiences.
Rating: 4.5/5
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