The Vanishing Half Readalikes | Eisenhower Public Library District

Author

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Description

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. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and...

2) The complete fiction of Nella Larsen

Author

Larsen, Nella

Notes

While Larsen's most famous novel, "Passing", is most closely related to "The Vanishing Half", all of her stories explore themes of race and finding one's place in the world.

Formats:

Book, eBook

Description

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"A light-skinned beauty who spends years passing for white finds herself dangerously drawn to an old friend's Harlem neighborhood. A restless young mulatto tries desperately to find a comfortable place in a world in which she sees herself as a perpetual outsider. A mother's confrontation with tragedy tests her loyalty to her race. The gifted Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen wrote compelling dramas about the black middle class that featured sensitive,...

3) Red at the bone

Author

Woodson, Jacqueline

Notes

Woodson's slim novel explores similar territory, but more so, these two authors are exceptional writers capable of seamlessly transitioning between multiple narrators.

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, Large Print

Description

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Moving forward and backward in time, Jacqueline Woodson's taut and powerful new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of the new child. As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance...

4) God help the child

Author

Morrison, Toni

Notes

Bennett is clearly influenced by Toni Morrison, and this novel also features a dark-skinned daughter born to a light-skinned mother, even if they are very different circumstances.

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Large Print, Pre-loaded Audio

Description

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Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child--the first novel by Toni Morrison to be set in our current moment--weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult. At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest...

5) Mrs. Everything: a novel

Author

Weiner, Jennifer

Notes

For a different perspective on a similar time period that also stars divergent twin sisters.

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

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"A smart, thoughtful, and timely exploration of two sisters' lives from the 1950s to the present as they struggle to find their places--and be true to themselves--in a rapidly evolving world. Mrs. Everything is an ambitious, richly textured journey through history--and herstory--as these two sisters navigate a changing America over the course of their lives"--

6) We wear the mask: 15 true stories of passing in America

Notes

Some of the most affecting parts of "The Vanishing Half" deal with passing. If you want to learn more about passing, in all different contexts, try this.