The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett.

4/5 rating. 343 pages.

Book #14 of 2022. Read March 12, 2022.

This is a beautiful and thought-provoking book all about the sides of ourselves we hide: both those we intentionally lie about and others we merely omit by not sharing. This book reminded me of a James Baldwin novel in parts because of the poetic, yet simple language, and deep themes.

The story focuses around two black twins: Stella who chooses to pass as white in the 60s and 70s and creates a whole new identity and life around this lie of omission. Her sister, Desiree meanwhile runs away from her miserable husband after one too many violent fights, taking her daughter with her. While the twins are very light and have the choice to pass, Desiree’s daughter, Jude, is described as so black she’s purple. After her move to LA, she becomes entwined in a group of eclectic friends who accept her.

This story in a way was terribly depressing. It brings up the worst aspects of people: hatred, fear, violence. But I still think that it was a great read. I don’t know if I could read it again, but the themes about who we are to the people around us and those we love really hit home. It’s a place of privilege to be able to actually be myself to the people I love, and I want to continue to be that vulnerable, honest person even more after finishing this book.

Some of the most poignant quotes that made me think:

• “I just hate to see you make yourself small for him.”
• “It was here and it was Desiree’s, and she’d felt as if they were both on the cusp of lives too big to even imagine.”
• “She just hated the idea of anyone telling her who she had to be.”
• “‘Imagine your life here,’ she said. ‘Imagine who you could be.’”
• “You didn’t just find a self out there waiting – you had to make one. You had to create who you wanted to be.”

Additional Quotes:

“A town for men like himself, who would never be accepted as white but refused to be treated like Negroes.”

“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?”

“Sometimes who you were came down to the small things.”

“All of her blessings had come so easily in the beginning of her life, and she’d spent the back half losing them all.”

“‘You be surprised by what emotion make people do,’ he said.”

“She didn’t understand exactly what he meant, but she liked being part of an us.”

“By high school, the names no longer shocked her but the loneliness did. You could never quite get used to loneliness; every time she thought she had, she sank further into it.”

“‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ she said, although nobody had asked and she wasn’t.”

“He was the only thing in her life she wasn’t prepared for.”

“He wanted to pull her back into bed. There was never enough of her. He could never love her the way he wanted to. Full.”

“On the road, he tried to remember how to fall asleep alone.”

“But that wasn’t exactly true. She’d always known that it was possible to be two different people in one lifetime, or maybe it was possible for some.”

“Her father made her feel special, and she hadn’t felt that way until Lonnie kissed her behind the barn.”

“But she couldn’t imagine any boy loving her; it was enough that Lonnie noticed her at all.”

“This big ol’ world and we only get to go through it once.”

“You could never know who might hurt you until it was too late.”

“She was the type of girl that boys only kissed in secret and, after, pretended that they hadn’t.”

“But maybe the rich didn’t feel a need to hide. Maybe wealth was the freedom to reveal yourself.”

“A body could be labeled but a person couldn’t, and the difference between the two depended on that muscle in your chest.”

“You could convince anyone you belonged somewhere if you acted like you did.”

“She hadn’t realized how long it takes to become somebody else, or how lonely it can be living in a world not meant for you.”

“But she loved the simplicity of math, a number growing or shrinking depending on which function you performed. No surprises, just one logical step leading to another.”

“Important men became martyrs, unimportant ones victims. The important men were given televised funerals, public days of mourning. Their deaths inspired the creation of art and the destruction of cities. But unimportant men were killed to make the point that they were unimportant – that they were not even men – and the world continued on.”

“Must be like losing half of yourself.”

“She’d walked in a colored girl and left a white one. She had become white only because everyone thought she was.”

“The hardest part about becoming someone else was deciding to. The rest was only logistics.”

“You only needed one yes to be happy – medical school was like love in that regard.”

“‘Okay,’ she said. ‘No more hiding.’”

“In Las Vegas, she’d sat beside Blake in a smoke-filled casino as he lost four hundred dollars at the craps table, staying in the game longer than he should have because he was convinced that he was due. But dice owed you nothing.”

“I just hate to see you make yourself small for him. Just because he’ll never see you the way you see yourself.”

“‘Well, maybe that’s your problem,’ Kennedy said. ‘You tell yourself no before anyone even says it to you.’”

“Nothing was as simple as you wanted it to be.”

“You shouldn’t tell people the truth because you want to hurt them. You should tell them because they want to know it. And I think you want to know now.”

“It meant nothing to anybody but her, which was part of the reason she could never get rid of it. It was the only part of her life that was real. She didn’t know what to do with the rest.”

“Her whole life, in fact, had been a gift of good fortune – she had been given whiteness.”

“I don’t think I can go back there without you.”

“Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles. You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.”

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