Summary of The Vanishing Half E-Book

Alexander Cooper

• Herausgeber: Ben Business Group LLC
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Summary of The Vanishing Half

The Vanishing Half , published in June 2020, is the second novel by author Brit Bennett. It became a New York Times bestseller and was selected as a Good Morning America Book Club Pick. The novel explores the themes of female family bonds and the Black experience in America. Bennett covered similar material in her debut novel, The Mothers (2016), which also became a New York Times bestseller. HBO has purchased the film rights to The Vanishing Half with the intention of creating a limited TV series from the material. Page number citations in this guide refer to the Kindle edition. 
The novel is set in several locations during different time periods. The story begins in the small village of Mallard, Louisiana, in 1968 and then skips to New Orleans, New York, Southern California, and back to Mallard between 1978 and the early 1980s. Just as the time and location shift among numerous places and decades, the limited third-person narrative point of view shifts among multiple people. Since the novel is driven by the perceptions and recollections of its characters, the story does not move in a linear fashion.
The plot concerns identical twins Desiree and Stella Vignes, who leave their small Louisiana village at the age of 16 to seek their fortune in New Orleans. Ten years later, their lives have diverged in radically different directions. Desiree has fled an abusive marriage to a Black man and brought her daughter back to Mallard, while Stella is passing for White, is married to a businessman, has a daughter with him, and lives in California.
Much of the novel recounts Desiree’s search for her missing twin and how that search is completed by Desiree’s daughter. In the process, the book explores the themes of how identity is constructed, the role that self-loathing plays in creating an alternate persona, and the social ostracism visited on those who are different from the norm in some way.

Here is a Preview of What You Will Get:

• A Full Book Summary
• An Analysis
• Fun quizzes
• Quiz Answers
• Etc

Get a copy of this summary and learn about the book.

Leseprobe

UUID: 6cd9e4ea-31aa-41c3-b3b4-ba56be1c489b

This ebook was created with StreetLib Writehttp://write.streetlib.com

Table of contents

SUMMARY of The Vanishing Half

Plot Summary

Part 1: “The Lost Twins (1968)”

Part 2: Maps (1978)

Part 3: Heartlines (1968)

Part 4: The Stage Door (1982)

Part 5: Pacific Cove (1985/1988)

Part 6: Places (1986)

Kennedy Sanders

Social Ostracism

Self-Loathing

Conclusion

SUMMARY of The Vanishing Half

by Brit Bennett - A Comprehensive Summary

SUMMARY of The Vanishing Half

The Vanishing Half, published in June 2020, is the second novel by author Brit Bennett. It became a New York Times bestseller and was selected as a Good Morning America Book Club Pick. The novel explores the themes of female family bonds and the Black experience in America. Bennett covered similar material in her debut novel, The Mothers (2016), which also became a New York Times bestseller. HBO has purchased the film rights to The Vanishing Half with the intention of creating a limited TV series from the material. Page number citations in this guide refer to the Kindle edition.

The novel is set in several locations during different time periods. The story begins in the small village of Mallard, Louisiana, in 1968 and then skips to New Orleans, New York, Southern California, and back to Mallard between 1978 and the early 1980s. Just as the time and location shift among numerous places and decades, the limited third-person narrative point of view shifts among multiple people. Since the novel is driven by the perceptions and recollections of its characters, the story does not move in a linear fashion.

The plot concerns identical twins Desiree and Stella Vignes, who leave their small Louisiana village at the age of 16 to seek their fortune in New Orleans. Ten years later, their lives have diverged in radically different directions. Desiree has fled an abusive marriage to a Black man and brought her daughter back to Mallard, while Stella is passing for White, is married to a businessman, has a daughter with him, and lives in California.

Much of the novel recounts Desiree’s search for her missing twin and how that search is completed by Desiree’s daughter. In the process, the book explores the themes of how identity is constructed, the role that self-loathing plays in creating an alternate persona, and the social ostracism visited on those who are different from the norm in some way.

Here is a Preview of What You Will Get:

A Full Book SummaryAn AnalysisFun quizzesQuiz AnswersEtc

Get a copy of this summary and learn about the book.

Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Identical twins Desiree and Stella Vignes live in Mallard, Louisiana in a community of light-skinned Black people. The villagers are proud of their Caucasian features and coloring, and most of them could pass for White. The Vignes girls have big dreams for their futures. Flamboyant Desiree wants to become an actress, while quiet Stella wants to be a teacher. Their dreams are crushed by their mother, who forces them to leave school at the age of 16 and take jobs as maids to help make ends meet. In 1954, Desiree convinces Stella to run away to New Orleans in search of a better life.

Fourteen years later, Desiree drags herself back to Mallard accompanied by her dark-skinned daughter. They are fleeing Desiree’s abusive husband. In the meantime, Stella has abandoned Desiree to pass for White. She married a wealthy businessman, had a daughter with him, and moved to California. Stella never reveals her identity to anyone and makes no attempt to contact her birth family.

When Desiree’s daughter, Jude, reaches the age of 18, she accepts a college scholarship at UCLA and leaves Mallard. During her time in California, she accidentally catches a glimpse of Stella and meets Stella’s daughter, Kennedy. Jude becomes obsessed with confronting her aunt. In the process, she forms an unlikely bond with Kennedy as the two ponder the meaning of their kinship, even though they look radically different from one another. Because of Jude’s interference, Stella returns to Mallard to repair her broken relationship with her sister and her mother. After this reunion, she goes back to her White life in California, and she is never able to achieve a true sense of identity because her entire life is based on a fabrication.

Part 1: “The Lost Twins (1968)”

Part 1: “The Lost Twins (1968)”

Identical twins Desiree and Stella Vignes spend their childhood in the small rural village of Mallard, Louisiana, in the early 1950s. Mallard was founded by one of their ancestors who sought to create a haven for mixed-race people like himself. The residents of the town all possess fair complexions, light-colored eyes, and straight hair. Any of them could easily be mistaken for a Caucasian. Proud of their fair coloring, the villagers look down on dark-skinned Black people and anybody who marries one.

At the age of 16, Desiree and Stella will be forced to quit school to help their mother make ends meet by going to work as housemaids. Imaginative Desiree has always dreamed of being an actress, while practical Stella wishes to teach school. Wanting to create a better future for themselves, the girls run away to New Orleans in August 1954.

Eventually, Stella disappears, and Desiree goes to Washington, DC, where she finds work analyzing fingerprints for the government. She soon meets a dark-skinned Black lawyer named Sam and marries him. A few years into their marriage, Sam begins to beat Desiree. They have a daughter named Jude, who is dark-skinned like her father. Desiree thinks, “A different woman might have been disappointed by how little her own daughter resembled her, but she only felt grateful. The last thing she wanted was to love someone else who looked just like herself” (25).

After Sam threatens Desiree with a gun, Desiree becomes convinced that he will someday kill her. Despite an absence of 14 years, Desiree takes Jude and returns to her mother’s home in Mallard. After her escape, Sam hires a bounty hunter to track down Desiree because he wants to reclaim Jude. The man who takes the job is Early Jones. He spent time in Mallard years earlier, and Desiree made a big impression on him at the time: “When Ceel slid him the photograph, Early’s stomach lurched. He almost felt as if he’d willed it. For the first time in ten years, he was staring at Desiree Vignes’s face” (31-32).

Desiree recalls her father’s murder when she and Stella were only children. Five White men came to the Vignes home and shot him. He survived, and they went to the hospital and shot him again. They claimed he had written a rude note to a White woman though Leon Vignes was illiterate. In reality, his furniture business was cutting into the profits of the men who killed him. At the wake, someone observes, “White folks kill you if you want too much, kill you if you want too little […] You gotta follow they rules but they change ’em when they feel. Devilish, you ask me.” (35)

The morning after her arrival in Mallard, Desiree enrolls Jude in school, where the other children are shocked by Jude’s dark skin. Desiree’s mother, Adele, asks Desiree how she intends to support her child, berating her for not having a plan. Desiree goes to a nearby town and applies for a job as a fingerprint analyst with the police department but is immediately rejected.