** spoiler alert ** I loved Brit Bennet's The Vanishing Point and couldn’t put it down. The novel was intriguing for me to picture what if Desiree and Stella were one person but who could have two very different lives based on 1) how society chose to view them, and 2) the choices that they made. The novel's premise of them having the potential to pass off as white showed how race (at least in their case) was an artificial construct, or how Stella demonstrated it, as simply being a performance by how she carried herself.
The novel really hit its stride for me when Jude and Kennedy had grown up and their lives revealed how much their mothers’ decisions influenced the opportunities available to them. Jude and Kennedy grew up to be very different women. I couldn't help but wonder if Jude would be like Kennedy, or vice versa, if their mothers had chosen differently.
"[Kennedy’s] whole life, in fact, had been a gift of good fortune -- she had been given whiteness...Her whole life, a bounty of gifts she hadn't deserved."
I can understand (may not agree with it) why Stella felt she had to abandon Desiree to have a singular identity as a white woman. Maybe if they weren’t twins, Stella can have it both ways of having a career as a white woman and not losing her family. But having an identical twin may have not made that possible.
“She had become white because it was practical, so practical that, at the time, her decision seemed laughably obvious. Why wouldn’t you be white if you could be? Remaining what you were or becoming something new, it was all a choice, any way you looked at it. She had just made the rational decision.”
In my opinion, the most reprehensible thing that Stella did was insinuate that Loretta’s husband may have made a pass at her. Stella knows the consequences of a black man being accused of harassing a white woman (e.g. Emmett Till) and especially in the light of how her father was murdered, the neighbors could have lynched Loretta’s husband. I was definitely angry reading that part.
I felt the ending tied up the story nicely and I felt satisfied.
Some other notes:
* In terms of race being an inherent identity, or a community identity:
* "Mallard has always been more of an idea than a place."
* “You couldn’t go through your whole life not 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.”
* Interesting point on what is power when Stella observed:
* “Because she knew that, if it came down to her word versus Loretta’s, she would always be believed. And knowing this, she felt, for the first time, truly white.”
* The words poor and black being synonymous when Stella always referred to herself as poor growing up but never black.
The novel really hit its stride for me when Jude and Kennedy had grown up and their lives revealed how much their mothers’ decisions influenced the opportunities available to them. Jude and Kennedy grew up to be very different women. I couldn't help but wonder if Jude would be like Kennedy, or vice versa, if their mothers had chosen differently.
"[Kennedy’s] whole life, in fact, had been a gift of good fortune -- she had been given whiteness...Her whole life, a bounty of gifts she hadn't deserved."
I can understand (may not agree with it) why Stella felt she had to abandon Desiree to have a singular identity as a white woman. Maybe if they weren’t twins, Stella can have it both ways of having a career as a white woman and not losing her family. But having an identical twin may have not made that possible.
“She had become white because it was practical, so practical that, at the time, her decision seemed laughably obvious. Why wouldn’t you be white if you could be? Remaining what you were or becoming something new, it was all a choice, any way you looked at it. She had just made the rational decision.”
In my opinion, the most reprehensible thing that Stella did was insinuate that Loretta’s husband may have made a pass at her. Stella knows the consequences of a black man being accused of harassing a white woman (e.g. Emmett Till) and especially in the light of how her father was murdered, the neighbors could have lynched Loretta’s husband. I was definitely angry reading that part.
I felt the ending tied up the story nicely and I felt satisfied.
Some other notes:
* In terms of race being an inherent identity, or a community identity:
* "Mallard has always been more of an idea than a place."
* “You couldn’t go through your whole life not 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.”
* Interesting point on what is power when Stella observed:
* “Because she knew that, if it came down to her word versus Loretta’s, she would always be believed. And knowing this, she felt, for the first time, truly white.”
* The words poor and black being synonymous when Stella always referred to herself as poor growing up but never black.