Split Identity : A Book Review of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and The Women by Kristin Hannah
If they hadn’t been speaking so loudly, you would have thought I was eavesdropping. I got the impression these women wanted to be heard. And the distinct impression that I wasn’t invited into the discussion. Two coworkers bantered back and forth about the defining qualities of being a Gen Xers. This is the generation of people born between 1965 and 1980. In clipped, but friendly tones, they argued the list all through our working lunch hour. The concluded with, “Our definition is that we don’t care about what defines us.”
Three days prior, but in a fictional world, Frankie McGrath had struggled with defining her character in Kristin Hannah’s The Women. On the table, next to my Panera panini, I was making my way through The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. Two books and two women, raising their voices over why it is so hard to know who you really were.
Before we get to my colliding coincidence, let’s look at each novel for the daring and brave story it has to tell. I could review these books in separate posts and have plenty of content to discuss. The Vanishing Half and The Women are stand alone, knock-out historical fiction novels that I would recommend to most readers.
Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half follows the storylines of twins from their genesis in Mallard, Louisiana (circa 1954) to the rejoining of the subsequent generation through their daughters, twenty-five years later. Just like the diverging lines on a palm, Stella and Desiree Vignes’s stories run in opposite directions when Stella runs away. She’s passed over, due to her light-skinned complexion, and lives as a upper-class white woman in Orange County, California. The painful truth of Stella rejecting being black, and her family, haunts her mother, twin, niece, and daughter.
Kristin Hannah’s most recent release, The Women, focuses on an Irish American girl named Frankie McGrath who volunteers to be a combat nurse for the frontline in Vietnam at the height of the war (1967-1969). A young, idealistic girl chasing heroism, according to her father’s standards, returns from two tours of duty shattered and unable to help herself. The world of her childhood, which she cherished above all else, washes out with the tide of unbearable trauma. As confusing as the conflict between the Americans and the Viet Cong army is, Frankie’s return to an ungrateful and hateful nation is worse. Each day she swallows her feelings along with pills and booze, begging the memories to vanish.
The intersection of this workplace conversation and these books does not feel accidental. Identity is a giant question that every person must face, and hopefully answer, at some point in their life. Many of humanity’s greatest stories are of survival, loss, hurt, and reclamation of self because these are typical human experiences. At this intersection, I wondered how much grace are we affording ourselves to take the time to live these experiences? Or are we trying to hurry up the process to arrive at an answer?
“[Kennedy after Jude revealed they were cousins.] She would know, she decided. You couldn’t go through your whole life now knowing something so fundamental about yourself. She would feel it somehow. She would see it in the faces of other blacks, some sort of connection. But she felt nothing. She glanced at them across the subway car with the vague disinterest of a stranger. Even Frantz was, essentially, foreign to her. Not because he was black, although that, perhaps, underscored it. But his life, his language, even his interests were apart from her. Sometimes she stepped inside the little closet he’d converted into an office and watched him scribble equations that she’d never understand. There were many ways to be alienated from someone, few to actually belong.”
An excerpt from The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Stella Vignes discards her twin sister, her hometown, and her race. Frankie McGrath scrubs out her service in the Vietnam War, her love, and her memories. Two girls, novel beside novel, try to wipe clean a past that was instrumental in growing them up into the women they are. Both tumble headfirst into the truth.
Women who try to erase their past, only end up erasing themselves.
I hadn’t planned on reading The Vanishing Half and The Women at the same time. But I am grateful that I did. What struck me about these novels was the depth of agony Bennett and Hannah were able to communicate in their historical fictions. The primary focus was not the settings of these plots, although they created a rich and chaotic backdrop. Both authors wrote about the inner wars of their characters.
I like Kristin Hannah novels a lot. Her scenes are great. Transporting readers back in time, through our senses and spirit, is her unique ability. And I enjoy that Hannah doesn’t write like she is talking at me. Does she take a stand? Absolutely! And yet, Hannah creates space for us to move around with our new perspectives, to fight back a little bit, and walk back through the door we entered by. I wonder sometimes how much struggling she does with the hefty themes that she chooses for her novels.
This was my first Brit Bennett novel, and I’ll be sure to read others by her. The Vanishing Half left a deep and thought-provoking impression on me. I am excited to learn what other topics she wrestles with in The Mothers.
As long as people have to struggle to survive, women and men will face the brutal and often necessary choice of denying one’s true identity for the sake of anonymity and safety. Searching for the truth in stories is really important and satisfying work. It weaves people together.
Will you be challenged by Stella, Desiree, and Frankie’s stories with me? Links for all titles are available in this post. If you have already read The Women and or The Vanishing Half, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.