Origins

I once knew a woman who hadn’t spoken to her family in twenty-five years. She described the death of her father as the greatest blessing of her life because it had allowed her to sever all ties with her abusive mother and her miserable childhood. When she talked about her origins, she was often vague in details. I knew the general geographical area she was from but she would never tell me the specific location.

Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half features a character who goes to similar extremes. At seventeen, Stella and her twin escape the tiny Louisiana hamlet they grew up in. She then abandons her sister, Desiree, having no contact with her for decades. Her twin, after a stint in DC, returns to their hometown with her young daughter.

The girls’ hometown was founded by a relative of theirs, a freed slave with light skin. In the present, the residents are all light skinned black people. We learn just how important this is to them when they spot Desiree’s daughter. She is blueblack, soon nicknamed Tar Baby, and shunned by her peers because of her dark skin. Later, like her aunt before her, Jude escapes her hometown and works to form an identity free of the prejudice she had experienced.

Alice Walker coined the term colorism to describe a prejudice within a race that privileges lighter skin color over darker, creating a caste system based on shade. Many of the characters in this book are colorists, gaining a sense of identity by the degree of their blackness. Stella passes as white, terrified that her pregnancy will expose her past. She is overtly racist, concerned that any contact with black people might reveal her origins. Her niece, Jude, is treated terribly so she escapes to LA. There she forms a family of choice and strives to explore intimacy.

Throughout the book there is a suggestion that identity is partly performative. A drag queen, Barry, puts on make up and sequins, taking the stage to forget himself. What is the difference between him and Stella? Can we ever truly transcend our past or does it lurk around us always? This book will have you thinking about these questions and more. It is an absorbing and compelling story of race privilege.