Tag Archives: Lynching

Vanishing Act

Many things vanish in Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, including an entire town in Louisiana. However, the plot revolves around twin sisters, Desiree and Stella Vignes, and how one of them (Stella) vanishes. Not through foul play but simply because she can. Actually they both vanish at first. One comes back after 14 years, but the other doesn’t. This is getting confusing. I better start over.

In Mallard, Louisiana, no one marries “dark”. The town’s founder was a freed slave who had a white father. He built a town for people like him – people “who would never be accepted as white but refused to be treated like Negroes.” After several generations the Mallard folks are light skinned. “But even here, where nobody married dark, you were still colored and that meant white men could kill you for refusing to die.” That’s what happened to the twins’ father. He was lynched when they were young children. They saw him dragged out of the house.

The story opens in 1968. The twins have been gone 14 years when Desiree walks into town pulling a 7 or 8 year old girl. The town is shocked because the child is not light skinned. She’s “midnight”. The twins had run away to New Orleans and found jobs, but then Stella realized how easy it was for her to pass as white. Soon after, she vanishes. Desiree eventually moves to Washington, D.C. and marries a physically-abusive man. They have a daughter, Jude. When Desiree concludes her husband is likely to kill her, she vanishes again – returning to Mallard with Jude.

Vanishing is not the same as escaping. “You can escape a town, but you cannot escape blood. Somehow, the Vignes twins believed themselves capable of both.” They were wrong.

Similarly, passing is not the same as being. “At first, passing seemed so simple . . . But she was young then. She hadn’t realized how long it takes to become somebody else, or how lonely it can be living in a world not meant for you.” The story spans several decades – from the 1950s to 1988, and eventually Stella does turn up. When she does, her past is waiting.

The story is an intriguing examination of what a person gives up when she decides to become someone else. Given the time’s overt racism, Stella’s highwire act has real risks. Which leaves the reader asking: considering everything she sacrifices, was “vanishing” worth it? It’s to Bennett’s credit that the reader struggles for an answer.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Love is a Many Splendored Thing – Sometimes

So what’s Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves about? Love. Ahh, that sounds really warm and cozy. It is – until it isn’t. This novel is no Hallmark card or cheesy pop song. Its major theme is love in its many forms (splendored or not): young love, mature love, obsessive love, self-love (our favorite), destructive love (which may not be love at all), forbidden love (sweet!), and familial love (whatever).

The novel is primarily set in North Dakota’s Badlands (major metaphor alert) on and near an Ojibwe reservation. However, it opens with the murder of a White family on a farm. The sole survivor is a baby in a crib (the murderer finds her when she starts crying). So now he has a decision to make.

The story then jumps ahead decades to the 1960s. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that shortly after the murders 4 Native Americans came across the scene. When several White men learn about the Native Americans’ presence at the farmhouse, they deputize themselves and (not being too concerned about guilt or innocence) lynch the 4 Native Americans. The murders and the subsequent lynchings permeate the community as if an icy phantom walks through it, even as the descendants from all sides interact and mix. There is no way to “unravel” the rope. “Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected here by blood.”

The novel is narrated by 4 characters and follows several inter-related families for about 40 years. The proximity of the White and Native communities may breed trouble, but it also creates desire. “We can’t seem to keep our hands off one another, it is true, and every attempt to foil our lusts though laws and religious dictums seems bound instead to excite transgression.” This is not new. But Ms. Erdrich is a skilled writer, and her wonderfully-drawn characters keep the story interesting and the reader engaged. Ultimately, we learn what happened to the baby and who murdered the family. There is a resolution of sorts. But, still, questions linger.

While the murders and lynchings are ever present, this story is about finding, maintaining, and losing love – even the most fulfilled are not exempt. “I have loved intensely. I have lived an ordinary and a satisfying life, and I have been privileged to be of service to people. Most people. There is no one I mourn to the point of madness and nothing I would really do over again.” That sounds like a full life, but Ms. Erdrich is too honest to leave it at that. Fulfilled or not, questions still linger.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor.