By Brit Bennett
This book is about black twins born in the 1940’s in Louisiana. The girls are noted in their town for the lightness of their skin, a highly-valued trait in the area known as Mallard, Louisiana. Mallard is so small, and not so official as to be found on any maps, and is made up of light-skinned residents who scorn any black people darker than themselves.
Early in their childhood, the girls witness the violent lynching of their father through the slits in the closed closet door of their hiding place in their own home. Having the dubious honor of being lynched twice (read the book), their father and his funeral seem to be the first major moment in the girls’ life.
At the age of sixteen, hard-headed, no-nonsense Desiree and shy, booksmart Stella are told by their mother she needs them to start working to bring in money for the family expenses. Stella dreamed of going to school instead, while Desiree has dreamt of escape since her father’s funeral. With both their goals now aligned, they run away to New Orleans. From there, quickly their paths diverge. Nervous, demure Stella leaves in the night with only a note for Desiree to remember her by, and begins her life “passing” for white. Desiree, abandoned and defiant still, pursues a life, and a relationship, that is everything she was raised not to do in Washington, D.C.
Eventually, Desiree returns home to Mallard with a very dark-skinned daughter, Jude, and slowly rejoins the community. Stella is never heard from by her mother or sister, and is not found by the best bounty hunter in Louisiana. Where is Stella now, and what has she become?
The book eventually tells us. It also brings up multiple instances of people of the same race treating each other poorly based on how light or dark they are. Gender identity and roles are explored, as are love, goodness, family, and the difficulty in breaking through the rules and environment in which each of us is raised.
I was not a big fan of this work, though I did enjoy learning from a new perspective about topics I had only read about in history books previously. There is an awful lot of lying to people that characters are supposed to love. Additionally, people are willfully ignorant or over-compensate with what they hate most about themselves projected onto others. Not to say this doesn’t happen in real life of course, it just made it very difficult to like most of the characters.
Soundtrack
- Hey Jude by The Beatles
- Love Child by The Supremes
- Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell
- YMCA by The Village People
- Last Dance by Donna Summer
- Hollywood Nights by Bob Seger
- Ebony & Ivory by Stevie Wonder
- Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks
- Where do Broken Hearts Go by Whitney Houston
Pros & Cons & Potential Spoilers
Pros
- The kindest people in this book are drag queens
- Victims of domestic violence escape the situation
- Jude’s perseverance and education overcome a lot
Cons
- Racism among people of the same race
- Entitled, spoiled brats continue to act like entitled, spoiled brats
- I understand Stella’s initial motivation about her choices, but I struggled with her continued self-justification and actions