Despite starting her life anew, there is a part of Desiree that still longs for that missing piece that once made her feel whole. In the ensuing events, Desiree was left no choice but to flee and return to her birthplace, now with a child in tow, Jude who was then eight-years-old. She thought he was the man of her dreams and they ended up getting married. Shortly after settling in New Orleans, Stella left her sister, Desiree, to fend for her own.Īlone and feeling dejected, Desiree moved to Washington D.C. Shortly after reaching the age of sixteen, the sisters, inseparable, ran away from their mother, and their community. This left their mother Adele to raise them. When they were still young, they witnessed the murder of their father. Twi sisters Desiree and Stella Vignes were born to a poor African-American family in the Deep South community of Mallard, Louisiana. Whether they manifest or not, it cannot be denied that there are parts of us which are longing to be unleashed. There are also those among us who want to forget a traumatic past, episode or experience. Some of us wants to break free from the shackles that hold us to the ground. Most of us long to move on and discover new places or uncharted territories.

Behind every yearning to runaway is a bevy of reasons. 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.There is always that part of us that wants to escape, whether physically, spiritually, or virtually. 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. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' story lines intersect?

Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. 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. The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical.

Reviews of the vanishing half