Readin' Vegans--"The Vanishing Half"

For our Oct. 25 online book club, we'll discuss the novel THE VANISHING HALF, by Brit Bennett (Riverhead Books, 2020). You need not have attended a previous discussion to join us for this one. We'll discuss the book until about 8:00, followed by open conversation.

The Zoom link to the discussion is posted on the right, visible to those who RSVP. PLEASE NOTE: THIS LINK DISAPPEARS AT THE MEETUP START TIME, THAT IS, 7:00 PM. We'll be available from 6:50 on to help anyone who might need extra time to connect.
You will need a computer, laptop, smartphone or other device with internet access. It's pretty easy; if you're curious, check out https://zoom.us/.
If you can't get on, call us at 303-300-2368.
We hope to "see" you there!

If you'd like to read ahead:
Nov. 29 (note 5th Tues.) -- Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Dec. 27 -- Esther the Wonder Pig, by Steve Jenkins
Jan. 24, 2023 -- If Nietzsche Were A Narwhal, by Justin Gregg
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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 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.

“Bennett’s gorgeously written second novel, an ambitious meditation on race and identity, considers the divergent fates of twin sisters, born in the Jim Crow South, after one decides to pass for white. Bennett balances the literary demands of dynamic characterization with the historical and social realities of her subject matter.”
—The New York Times

“Beautifully written, thought-provoking and immersive… Issues of privilege, inter-generational trauma, the randomness and unfairness of it all, are teased apart in all their complexity, within a story that also touches on universal themes of love, identity and belonging… The Vanishing Half, with its clever premise and strongly developed characters, is unputdownable and highly recommended.” —Associated Press

"Irresistible ... an intergenerational epic of race and reinvention, love and inheritance, divisions made and crossed, binding trauma, and the ever-present past." —Booklist, Starred Review

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