She doesn’t have a relationship with her mother and sister anymore…. She doesn’t have a family beyond her husband and her child. “She’s just completely alone because she doesn’t have any sense of community. Because of Stella’s secret, her own daughter fails to know her true identity as a biracial woman and she maintains her lie even after befriending her new Black neighbor. “She is so committed to this new life she’s created for herself that there’s really no turning back,” she adds. Stella may live as a wealthy, “white” woman but, as Bennett notes, her perceived better life is really life “locked away” in a “suburban prison” she created for herself out of fear of embracing who she is. Bennett also found inspiration from the 1959 melodrama Imitation of Life and a novel called Playing Dead, centered on those who fake their deaths, to examine the trope of passing that she would further explore with her character Stella. “I found writing towards the myth to be a lot more interesting than sort of writing towards any history,” she says. Though utilizing her imagination, Bennett also referenced “research of similar Creole communities in Louisiana” to help describe this mythical town.

The Vanishing Half grew out of a conversation Bennett had about Mallard with her mother. The twins embark on separate paths, but the novel connects their stories and their daughters’ stories while shedding light on how people of color must find their identity and place in an unaccepting world. Desiree lives as a Black woman and later returns to Mallard with her darker-skinned daughter Jude (who faces discrimination and feelings of being “ostracized,” Bennett notes), whereas Stella undergoes a metamorphosis to live a life passing as a white woman with her husband and daughter. As teenagers, Desiree and Stella Vignes leave Mallard in pursuit of a different life. The story centers on twin sisters from a Louisiana town called Mallard, which is inhabited by Black residents who purposely intermarry so their children will be lighter-skinned. Apart from its moving storytelling, the novel takes place in the late 1960s and early ’70s, reimagining the civil rights movement era. It’s not surprising why Bennett’s 343-page novel has caught readers’ attention. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Bennett reacted to the adaptation news, shared her story inspirations and the book’s coincidental timeliness.īennett calls the period when she learned her book would be adapted by HBO “the most surreal week of my life.” “I was really humbled and just overwhelmed by how many people were interested in the TV possibilities of this book,” Bennett tells THR. “Everyone read the book and had intense emotional reactions to the characters and to the story.”

The vanishing half author