Brit Bennett: The Vanishing Half

The Cheeky Natives

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“The only difference between lying and acting was whether your audience was in on it, but it was all a performance just the same.”Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction. In 2014, she received the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and her debut novel The Mothers was a New York Times bestseller. Her second novel The Vanishing Half was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller. Her essays have been featured in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel. The Mother’s was a best selling debut and her sophomore release was named one of the best books of 2020. The Cheeky Natives sat down to discuss The Vanishing Half with her. A book exploring the lives of two identical sisters, Desiree and Stella Vignes. This book is a multi generational exploration of the wide ranging impacts of the choices people make in difficult circumstances. In a beautifully written page turner, Bennett asks the reader to imagine what difficulties lie at the intersection of grief, family and race. Bennett is a tour de force.

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