Book Review “The Vanishing Half”

*Warning: This post contains spoilers & feelings

Intro

I read The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett twice. Once many years ago, and again recently for my book club. The first time I read it, I loved the book. I didn’t remember much from my first reading of it except that it left me with so much pain and love for the characters.

The second time I read it, it felt like re-reading it all over again. I had forgotten so many details of the story such as Reese as a character, the domestic violence Desiree faced, and her second-chance love story with Early. All that stuck with me from the first reading was that there were twin sisters, Black, but very light skinned. One of them abandoned her sister and her life to pass as white, and the other did not. Then their daughters reunited in their adulthood. All of the details escaped me except for the love and pain.

Before I get deeper into my feelings I want to say that I am not Black and I am not dark skinned. My experience engaging with this novel is not that of looking into a mirror and seeing myself, but one of looking into a window at the experiences of others. 

What I loved

This novel is education disguised as literature. Or maybe it’s literature disguised as education. Either way, no history book could evoke in me what The Vanishing Half did. 

I loved how the book displayed the ugliness of colorism and anti-Blackness through the stories and lives of these characters. 

“Lightness, like anything inherited at a great cost, was a lonely gift. He’d married a mulatto even lighter than himself. She was pregnant then with their first child, and he imagined his children’s children’s children, lighter still, like a cup of coffee steadily diluted with cream. (p. 6)”

“They called her Tar Baby. Midnight. Darky. Mudpie. Said, Smile, we can’t see you. Said You so dark, you blend into the chalkboard. Said, Bet you could show up naked to a funeral. [...] They made up lots of jokes, and once, well into her forties, she would recite a litany of them at a dinner party in San Francisco. [...] She was amazed by how well she remembered. At that party, she forced herself to laugh, even though she’d found nothing funny at the time. (p. 94)”

Brit Bennett, played with the absurdness of the social construct that is race but never let us forget the real consequences of its cruelty. 

“Her father had been so light that, on a cold morning, she could turn his arm over to see the blue of his veins. But none of that mattered when the white men came for him, so how could she care about lightness after that? (p. 10)”

“During her last summer in Mallard [...] she’d gone to the South Louisiana Museam of Art on an ordinary Saturday morning, not Negro Day, and walked right up to the main entrance, not the side door where Negroes lined up in the alley. Nobody stopped her, and again, she’d felt stupid for not trying this sooner. There was nothing to being white except boldness. (p.168)”

I loved how the author was able to make me love each character so deeply that even when they were in the wrong, I understood them and their motives.

“Before Blake, she’d never felt comfortable. She didn’t realize this until after she’d met him, marveling as he ordered an entire steak for himself, remembering the nights she’d fallen asleep, her stomach hollowed. Or watching Blake try to decide between two neckties and, in the end, purchasing both, when she used to walk to school, toes cramped against her shoes. (p. 173)

I loved how masterfully Brit Bennett depicted the insidiousness of white supremacy oozing from the polite whites. She exposed the cowardice and baseness of lukewarm moderates who were uncomfortable with police brutality but still comfortable denying Black people their civil rights to live and eat wherever they wanted. 

“The country was unrecognizable now, Cath Johansen said, but it looked the same as it ever had to Stella. Tom Pearson and Dale Johansen and Percy White wouldn’t storm a colored man’s porch and yank him out of his kitchen, wouldn’t stomp his hands, wouldn’t shoot him five times. These were fine people, good people, who donated to charities and winced at newsreels of southern sheriffs swinging billy clubs at colored college students. They thought King was an impressive speaker, maybe even agreed with some of his ideas. They wouldn’t send a bullet into his head- they may have even cried watching his funeral, that poor young family - but they still wouldn’t have allowed the man to move into their neighborhood. (p.179).” 

What hurt so good

Like any romantic, I kept waiting for Stella to go back to Desiree. For her to take Kennedy with her. For there to be forgiveness and a beautiful family reunification. But that would have been too perfect and Brit Bennett reminded us that life is never perfect. 

The end of the book replicated for us readers, what the characters had to endure in their realities. An ending without Stella. A buried grandmother who Kennedy would never see. A sister without her twin. Desiree, Early, Jude, and Reese moving on. They were forced to accept that Stella would never go back. And even though I am not from this book, I am still reeling from this. As a sister, as a human, I am devastated. 

Regardless of the scar from that permanent absence, I believe we do get a happy ending. Desiree and Early move away from Mallard to start over. Jude is on her way to become a doctor and most importantly she and Reese are free to be themselves in their own skin.  

“But they did not find her amongst the dead. She had slipped out the back door with her boyfriend, holding his hand as they ran through the woods toward the river. The sun was beginning to set, and under the tangerine sky, Reese tugged his undershirt over his head. The sun warmed his chest, still paler than the rest of him. In time, his scars would fade, his skin darkening. She would look at him and forget that there had ever been a time he’d hidden from her. 

“He unzipped her funeral dress folding it neatly on a rock, and they waded into the cold water, squealing, water inching up their thighs. This river, like all rivers, remembered its course. They floated under the leafy canopy of trees, begging to forget. (p.389)”

And that is the gift that Brit Bennett gave us in The Vanishing Half. The story is over, the last page is turned but the feelings evoked are still piercing through.