Recommendations from our site
“The novel’s conceit—how different could your life be if you changed just one significant fact about yourself?—is a question twins often inspire in fiction. An author can treat twinhood as purely an intellectual experiment or, as in this morally compelling novel, use it to make a political point. What kind of country would allow a person’s racial identity to have such a consequential impact on how their life goes? Oh yeah, ours.” Read more...
Helena de Bres, Philosopher
“This book really blew both of us away. The central theme is around Black Americans who are ‘White passing’ or ‘White presenting’ but it says so much about White privilege. The novel is about two Black American sisters called Desiree and Stella Vignes. They escape life in a small Louisiana town and initially they live together. But it all changes after Stella gets a secretarial job at an upmarket department store. She is accepted as a White person even though she is Black, and she becomes fully wrapped up in her new identity.” Read more...
Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half follows the distinct lives of Vignes twins. This saga, which was a major hit internationally, spans the decades between the 1950s and the 1990s but begins in the fictional town of Mallard, Louisiana. Living in a small black community, the twins witness their father’s lynching at a young age and at sixteen run away together—though their lives take two very different directions. Bennett’s coming-of-age novel offers some very human insight into the themes of identity, colourism, and domestic abuse.
From our article Books like Where the Crawdads Sing
