The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
"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. Ten 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?"
“This big ol' world and we only get to go through it once. The saddest thing there is, you ask me.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half
This story was really beautifully written. I didn’t really know what this story was going to be about, other than twin sisters when I started. Overall, I found the blending of POVs and time shifts absolutely beautiful and the storyline absolutely heartbreaking. I am a white woman, and I have never and probably will never have to deal with anything close to the struggles in this book. But Stella’s decision to leave her family and become someone else completely broke my heart. To give up your entire family and lie about who you are to lead an easier life. That’s a choice no one should ever have to make, but reality is sometimes terrible. I thought that all the stories were twined together in a really fantastic way, making room for several different meanings of two halves.
The only reason I didn’t give this 4 stars is that I just felt like there wasn’t any closure at the end. I didn’t see the point in Stella’s visit a couple of chapters earlier if she wasn’t even going to be told about her mother’s death at the end. It felt like a really unfair ending to me and I wanted more to have changed between the characters than what was shown. Maybe down the road, they become close again, Stella just wasn’t ready yet at the time of her mother’s death. But all in all, this was a fantastic read that I really enjoyed.
Genre: historical
Representation: BIPOC MCs, trans masc and gay side characters
Content Warnings: racism, the n-word, homophobia,