The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
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The Vanishing Half
A Novel

Bestseller

Author: Brit Bennett

Narrator: Shayna Small

Unabridged: 11 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 06/02/2020


Synopsis

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2020 by Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, Buzzfeed, PureWow, New York Magazine and more

“Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.” —Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal 

“A page-turner.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. 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. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

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. 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.

As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.

Author Bio

American author, Brit Bennett, was born and raised in Southern California. She graduated from Stanford University, then earned her M.F.A. from University of Michigan. She was also an attendee of Oxford University. Quite a prestigious educational background for this author.

Her first work that garnered attention for Bennett was her essay for Jezebel entitled, "I Don't Know What to do With Good White People". That essay generated over one million views in three days. She has had other essays featured in The New Yorker. The New York Times Magazine, and The Paris Review.

Her debut novel was The Mothers, which was a NYT best-seller. Her second novel was The Vanishing Half, which was also a NYT #1 best-seller.

Bennett has received awards from different groups throughout her career for her fiction genre. She has also published important non-fiction essays.

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