Hidden Identities

 

Identity grasps at the true traits hidden amidst characters interwoven in their own lies. Brit Bennet’s novel “The Vanishing Half” ventures through multiple storylines of different characters and their conflicting understanding of self identity. Bennet jumps around the timeline of each characters life, two sisters Stella and Desiree are brought up immersed in a colored town obsessed with the lightness of ones skin. Later in her life as Stella cuts herself off from her blackness, passing as white, she cuts herself off from her family and town, creating a divide she will be unable to return from.  Her lost senses of prejudice actions result in an internal reflection of who her true self has become. In a wider outlook on Stellas character not only does she physically vanish from her old life, separating from her twin, than a half of her self identity vanishes as she spends years suppressing the half of herself not diluted by white privilege and discriminatory ideologies. Desiree the other half to Stella’s old self, discovers a different sense of individual identity as she explores her black side. Marrying a black man as a rebellion against her old home that praised light skin. Desiree eventually makes her way back home after loosing herself, she obtains stronger roots in a home she now acknowledges as her own. Bennet establishes foiled characters who are fostered in an environment where they learn to depend on each other. However as the sisters escape the confines of their youth they separate on adventure of freedom to define their individual selves. The contrasting journeys take a toll on each sister as one masks the truth to her identity and holds tight to the fantasies of white privilege, guilted away by her lie. While the other grasps at the old life she had before leaving,  hurt under the lies her sister laid upon her. As more of the story unfolds the two sisters juxtapose each other’s experiences and are lost within their own individuality. Bennet not only perpetuates the pain of racial identity but the multifaceted identities fabricated from a persons past experiences and desires. 

When looking inward to our own defined self identity that is manipulated by the experiences and choices of our past and present one may begin to question if they are holding a mask to their own face. What are the internal conflicts that arise in ones own life to sculpt the hidden reality of who one truly is.