Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half

Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half is a story about two African American twin girls, Stella and Desiree Vignes, and their separate lives. As children, they faced the difficulties of poverty and racism in their small town. Since the twins had more fair skin, one of the twins, Stella, portrayed herself as being white in order to get a job at Maison Blanche. Eventually, this led to changing her entire identity and pretending to be someone she is not her entire life through the way she talked, acted, and who she spent her time with. Through this job, Stella was met with the opportunity to escape her home town of Mallard and move to Boston, with her (white) boss and future husband, Blake Sanders. She took this opportunity without hesitation, but she left everything behind, including her sister, Desiree. After Stella left,

While in Mallard, Desiree was reconnected with an old fling of hers named Early Jones. Early would track down and find people for a living and referred to it as “hunting.” He was hired by Sam, who was unaware of Early’s relationship with Desiree, to find his missing wife. After Desiree’s discovery of this, she became closer with Early and rekindled their relationship as he did not inform Sam of her whereabouts, and in fact, lied about finding her. In chapter three, Desiree, in hopes of finding her long lost sister, asked Early to help hunt for Stella. Desiree and Early spent time hunting for Stella in Mallard, looking for any place they thought she could be. Early suggested to Desiree to check Maison Blanche, which is where Stella worked for Blake, after Desiree had been informed someone had seen her sister walking “arm in arm with a white man.” Unfortunately, when Desiree asked the secretary, she informed her that they had no current address as “[their] last few Christmas cards returned to sender,” meaning Stella had