“The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett (post 5): “Brilliant exploration of race, gender, and identity” (front flap)

In previous posts on this novel, I focussed on the overt multiple personality of the twin sister who marries a white man. But now that I’ve finished the novel, I can’t help but take it, as a whole, with a sense of humor, even as a comedy or farce, although I doubt that the author meant it that way.

The author is a moderately dark-skinned African-American woman. Her two protagonists are identical-twin African-American sisters, who are so light-skinned that they can easily pass for white. One sister marries a dark-skinned African-American man, from whom she must flee, because he turns out to be physically abusive. The other sister, passing for white, marries a white man (who is good, except that he resists a black family who buys the house across the street).

Other characters include a drag queen, a minor character; and a major character who is a female-to-male transsexual in the process of getting sex-reassignment surgery. He is the lover and prospective husband of the daughter of the twin who married the black man.

In short, this novel has such a wide assortment of racial and gender-bending characters that, although it always takes itself quite seriously, it verges on farce, if the reader takes it, not as totally implausible, but with a sense of humor.

However, it would appear that the author did not intend it as a comedy or farce, but as “a brilliant exploration of race, gender, and identity” (1, front flap); or, at least, that is how the publisher understood the author’s intention.

And what of the previously noted, overt multiple personality of the twin who passes as white? Since that issue is not developed in the rest of the novel, it would appear that the author thought of it as ordinary psychology, thus not requiring further comment. Of course, it would be ordinary psychology only to someone who had personally experienced it as ordinary, such as a great fiction writer with multiple personality trait.

1. Brit Bennett. The Vanishing Half. New York, Riverhead Books, 2020.