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A review by angelayoung
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
5.0
Clearly The Vanishing Half is about identity, but the myriad ways that Brit Bennett illustrates our desire to know who we are, our worries about who we are, how cadavers are given names by medical students, how acting/pretending for a long time perhaps makes a different life true, how we do and don't live our lives, how a transsexual copes, how we're prevented from and permitted to live our lives and how, in order to find another person, you have to disappear yourself, and how, with Alzheimer's disease, you lose yourself. All this and much more is brilliantly written and brilliantly thought-provoking.
Let alone the major question, and the divisive theme that runs through the novel, of whether you are born black or white and, if you're born black but pale-skinned in a town that only allows those whose black skin is pale to live there, what happens when one of those people chooses to live as if she was born with the skin-colour she wasn't born with.
A few illustrations:
Let alone the major question, and the divisive theme that runs through the novel, of whether you are born black or white and, if you're born black but pale-skinned in a town that only allows those whose black skin is pale to live there, what happens when one of those people chooses to live as if she was born with the skin-colour she wasn't born with.
A few illustrations:
'Isn't it funny ... white folks, so easy to fool! Just like everyone says.'But on thinking about her twin sister who'd
'It ain't no game. Passin' over. It's dangerous.'
'But white folks can't tell. Look at you - you just as redheaded as Father Cavanaugh. Why does he get to be white and you don't?'
'Because he is white. And I don't wanna be.'
'Well, neither do I.'
Lived white for half her life now ... maybe acting for that long ceased to be acting altogether. Maybe pretending to be white eventually made it so.And the sister, who has:
Created a new life with a man who could never know her, but how could she walk away from it now? It was the only life she had left.And an actress who becomes a real-estate agent:
She would disappear inside herself, inside these empty homes where nobody actually lived. As the room filled with strangers, she always found her mark, guiding a couple through the kitchen, pointing out the light fixtures, backsplash, high ceilings. 'Imagine your life here. Imagine who you could be.'And one of the twins, again:
You didn't just find a self out there waiting - you had to make one. You had to create who you wanted to be.