Join the Book Club Tuesday, May 3, at 3:30 p.m. via Zoom for a discussion of Brit Bennett's 2020 book, The Vanishing Half.
Contact Allison Gray, Ph.D., at [email protected] for the Zoom link or to be added to our email list.
Summary:
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 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.