Answers to Go
SAN MARCOS PUBLIC LIBRARY
625 E. HOPKINS ST.
512-393-8200
Q. I recently read the book The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. Could you recommend some other books like it?
A. The Vanishing Half has been very popular since its publication in 2020, and it was one of my favorite reads last year. This novel has consistently had a lengthy wait list at the San Marcos Public Library, even with multiple copies in circulation. If you haven’t read The Vanishing Half, here is a brief synopsis: The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. However, after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age 16, 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?
One book you might enjoy is Passing by Nella Larsen. Irene Redfield is a woman with an enviable life. She and her husband, Brian, a prominent physician, share a comfortable Harlem town house with their sons. But her hold on this world begins to slip the day she encounters Clare Kendry, a childhood friend with whom she had lost touch. Clare tells Irene how, after her father's death, she left behind the black neighborhood of her adolescence and began passing for white, hiding her true identity from everyone, including her racist husband. As Clare begins inserting herself into Irene's life, Irene is thrown into a panic, terrified of the consequences of Clare's dangerous behavior. When Clare witnesses the vibrancy and energy of the community she left behind, her burning desire to come back threatens to shatter her careful deception.
These thoughtful literary novels examine the lives of Black women passing as white in American society. Passing was written in the 1920s; The Vanishing Half is historical fiction that spans the 1950s through the 1980s.
Another read-alike suggestion is The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. This book tells the story of a young Black girl named Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, Pecola's life does change — in painful, devastating ways.
Both of these #OwnVoices novels feature small-town Black girls in mid-20th-century America that grapple with racism, colorism, and dreams deferred.
Another similar book is Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones.With the opening line, “My father, James Witherspoon is a bigamist,” Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man’s deception, a family’s complicity, and the teenage girls caught in the middle. Set in a middleclass neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families — the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered. Both of these incisive literary novels examine the idea of family and belonging through welldrawn characters and their ever-evolving relationships with each other.
For more book recommendations, call or email the library at 512-393-8200 or smpl@sanmarcostx.gov.
