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The Vanishing Half tells the interwoven stories of twins, Desiree and Stella Vignes, and their daughters, Jude and Kennedy, as both generations search for home and belonging against the backdrop of a prejudiced society. Moving back and forth in time, from Desiree’s and Stella’s childhoods in Mallard, Louisiana, in the 1940s and 1950s, to their daughters’ early adulthoods in the 1970s and 1980s in Los Angeles, the novel traces the two very different paths each twin follows. While Desiree lives as a Black woman, Stella decides to pass as a white woman. This decision tears the relationship between Stella and Desiree apart, leaving them estranged, each feeling as though they are missing their other half. It also results in vastly different lives for each of their daughters: Kennedy grows up as a privileged, wealthy, sheltered white child, while Jude grows up as an ostracized, bullied, impoverished Black child. Desiree and Stella each struggle to make sense of a life lived without her twin sister in it, to make a good life for her daughter, and to make her way in a world often filled with hate.
Desiree and Stella learn about prejudice early. Their childhoods are shattered when a group of white men lynch their father, Leon Vignes, after accusing him of writing a forward letter to a white woman. They witness this violent act from their father’s closet, and, worried Stella may scream aloud, Desiree covers her mouth. The moment solidifies both the sense that they are intertwined in their horror, nearly operating as a single person, and Desiree’s new understanding that Stella, who had previously been “as predictable as a reflection” has become unpredictable and unknowable. Filled with grief, they grow into teenagers, and they both struggle with dissatisfaction in Mallard: Desiree because she feels the smallness of the town is stifling, Stella because she has been sexually assaulted by her white employer, Mr. Dupont. They run away from Mallard on Founder’s Day in 1954. Leaving Mallard is the beginning of two very different paths for Desiree and Stella, paths that diverge and cause them to lose each other.
Desiree returns to her hometown in 1968 after being absent from Mallard for fourteen years, without Stella but with her eight-year-old daughter, Jude, in tow, a move that emphasizes the cyclical nature of time throughout the novel. Mallard is a town built for light-skinned Black people, and the townspeople are scandalized because Jude is dark-skinned, illustrating from the outset the prejudice and alienation Jude will face growing up there. In flashbacks, Desiree reveals that after she and Stella lived together in New Orleans for a year after leaving Mallard, Stella started passing for white. When Stella leaves Desiree, she leaves a note saying she needs to find her own way, suggesting that part of her decision to pass as white is an attempt to differentiate herself from her sister after a lifetime of having their identities intertwined. Bennett likens passing to a kind of death, and, indeed, Desiree grieves Stella as though she has died. Desiree becomes a skilled fingerprint analyst, focusing on the subtle, hard-to-spot patterns that make one person unique from another, which parallels the way that the twins are subtly but profoundly different from one another.
In the aftermath of Stella’s departure, Desiree falls in love with Sam Winston, the man who will become Jude’s father. He is kind to Desiree at first but then begins to physically abuse her, suggesting that though Desiree fled the violence that claimed the life of her father, it came back into her life through her husband. Desiree returns home to escape his violence and to provide a safe home for Jude. However, history often finds a way of repeating itself throughout the novel, and as a teenager, Jude finds herself romantically entangled with Lonnie, a boy who is also abusive to her and often torments her for being dark-skinned. As Jude weathers the prejudice of Mallard, she, like her mother and her aunt, flees the town to go to college at UCLA. In Mallard, Desiree reconnects with an old flame, Early Jones, a bounty hunter who was hired by Sam to find her. However, Early becomes Desiree’s protector and helps her find Stella, suggesting that from the ashes of her abusive marriage, Desiree finds her way towards the love of her life, a man who truly cares for her.
Meanwhile, when Stella separated from Desiree in New Orleans in 1955, she fell in love with a wealthy white man, Blake Sanders, while passing as a white secretary. In passing as white, Stella, in many ways, seeks to escape the violence and pain that marked her childhood and her father’s unjust death. To be white, however, Stella must disappear entirely and live her life as though she does not have a sister and mother who love and miss her. Like Desiree, Stella has one daughter, Kennedy, a daughter who grows up with all the privilege and comfort that Jude lacks, a girl who believes her mother to be white and her place in the world to be fixed. Stella, though successful at passing, is homesick and longs for her sister and the family she left behind. Though she wields her perceived white privilege to attempt to prevent the Walkers, a Black family, from moving into her wealthy Los Angeles neighborhood, she finds herself unable to stay away from Loretta Walker, who reminds her of Desiree and of the Black life she left behind. Operating in a liminal space in which she both is and isn’t white, both is and isn’t Black, Stella feels alienated everywhere.
At UCLA in 1978, Jude meets Reese Carter, a transplant from El Paso who escaped his painful childhood home, where his family didn’t accept that he was a man. Born Therese, Reese sheds his past self as he travels from Texas to California. Jude and Reese slowly develop a loving relationship, a departure from the abuse that both experienced in previous relationships. Catering at a fancy party, Jude meets Kennedy, who is a guest at the party, and their different stations in life immediately emphasize Kennedy’s comparative privilege. Jude drops a bottle of wine when Kennedy’s mother enters the room, for she is the spitting image of Jude’s own mother, and the shattering glass parallels the way that the moment shatters the reality that Desiree, Stella, and their daughters have lived in for the past fourteen years. This moment marks the beginning of the end of Stella’s and Desiree’s estrangement. Jude has witnessed the results of her mother’s estrangement from her sister her entire life and wants badly to know her aunt. Jude confronts Stella at Kennedy’s play, telling her that Desiree has been looking for her for all these years, in many ways acting as a mouthpiece for her mother. Stella flees. Later, angry after Kennedy makes a disparaging remark about Jude’s skin tone, Jude reveals to Kennedy that their mothers are twins. This moment exemplifies that Kennedy’s white privilege is part of what has kept her in the dark about both her and her mother’s true identities.
Years later, in 1986, Stella finally returns home. Her mother, Adele, has memory loss and doesn’t even recognize that Stella has returned after a long absence, emphasizing how much Stella lost in giving up her family to become white. Desiree and Stella reconnect, trying to make up for lost time in and rediscovering who their long-lost other half is. Though Stella expresses regret for leaving all those years ago, she leaves Desiree again the next day without saying goodbye. When Stella sees her daughter again, she finally tells Kennedy the truth, paving the way for them to have a real relationship, one that is built on trust and honesty. When Adele dies, Jude and Reese return for the funeral, despite Jude’s insistence that she would never return to Mallard after she left. This homecoming suggests the possibility of a new future. Reese and Jude slip away and head into the river to swim, hoping that the water will wash off the past.
