The Vanishing Half Themes

The Vanishing Half suggests that racial identity is shaped by much more than the color of a person’s skin. The novel follows Desiree and Stella, two light-skinned Black women who are identical twins. They grow up in Mallard, Louisiana, a town that values light skin above all else. Although Mallard is technically populated by Black citizens, everyone in town marries light-skinned people so that each new generation becomes lighter and lighter. When Desiree and…

The Vanishing Half is a novel about loss and how people respond to it. For some of the characters, the thing they’ve lost is straightforward and obvious—Desiree, for example, loses her twin sister (and closest companion) when Stella runs away to pass as white. Both twins also lost their father when a group of racist white men murdered him. In both cases, Desiree and Stella simply tried to move on and focus on…

Within the novel’s broader examination of racial identity, The Vanishing Half looks at who, exactly, gets to live a prosperous life in the United States. When Stella transitions into white society, her identity as a Black woman isn’t the only thing she leaves behind—she also leaves behind a life of rural poverty and steps into a world of privilege and opportunity. The fact that she ends up with Blake, a successful white man from…