Monday, November 7, 2022

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

From the New York Times-bestselling 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.

343 pages (June 2020)

 
 
 
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
 
 
 

Brit Bennett on Good Morning America :

 
This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.

Title Read-alikes: Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah; The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict; Just Us: an American conversation by Claudia Rankine; Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi; Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones; Pachinko by Min Jin Lee; The Color of Air by Gail Tsukiyama; Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi; We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin; Americanh by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Song for Almeyda & Song for Anninho by Gayi Jones; Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld; and October Suite by Maxine Clair.

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