The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

 Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021--San Antonio

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is a very good book that was a finalist for the National Book Award.  The two main characters are two girls/women who were born and raised in a rural Louisiana community of light-skinned black people.  Everyone there took pride in being light-colored and the town was unwelcoming to those with deep black skin.  However, the residents there also suffered, like so many black people, from discrimination and even violence at the hands of whites.  The two girls, at age 17 run away to New Orleans to create a new life for themselves.  And after one gets fired from the laundry where they both work, their lives take a change.  They need money to support themselves, and it isn't easy for a black girl to find a job, especially one who is not legally an adult.  One day the unemployed one wanders into a New Orleans department store--not through the side entrance for blacks but through the main doors.  No one says or does anything; they assume she is white.  She has always been good in school, has good penmanship, is good at typing, etc., so when she learns that the department store is hiring a new secretary, she applies and gets the job.  From then on, the sisters gradually grow apart with one continuing to live as a black person and the other passing as white.  They eventually lose track of each other and live totally separate lives.  The book continues to tell the stories of these two sisters and the children they have, the problems that keep them apart, the coincidence that brings them together briefly, and the distant friendship the develops between their two daughters.  I liked the story and the quality of the writing.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.