>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in a small southern town a couple of hours from New Orleans.

The town is called Mallard, and this town is unlike any other that you've heard about.

It was founded in 1848 by Alphonse de cure.

He was a light skinned black man, the son of a white plantation owner and an enslaved person who intended to create a community for light skinned black people, aiming to make each generation lighter.

He had felt rejected by white society, but he also felt estranged from black society due to his skin tone.

And so he wanted to create a kind of third place, a town for people who were neither accepted as white nor treated as fully black.

This is a fictional town created by the acclaimed author Brit Bennett.

Her book The Vanishing Half is not set entirely in Mallard, because at the center of the story are twin girls, Desiree and Stella, who run away after turning 16 years old.

They are light skinned enough so that one of them decides to pass as a white woman.

The other maintains her identity.

They end up living very different lives.

Their daughters, who are cousins, grow up without the full story at first.

In fact, Stella's daughter Kennedy grows up fully believing that she is white, the daughter of a white woman, The Vanishing Half is Bennett's second book.

Her debut was called The Mothers, and it exploded onto the literary scene a decade ago.

Both books were New York Times bestsellers.

The Vanishing Half was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for fiction, and now Brit Bennett is coming to Rochester next week for an event with the Rochester Speaker Series.

But first, she is our guest on Connections and we are glad to welcome Brit Bennett Britt.

Thanks for being with us.

>> Hi, thanks for having me.

>> And welcome in studio to my colleague Norma Holland, Chief of Staff at the Office of University Engagement Enrichment at the University of Rochester.

Former journalist, of course, desk mate of mine.

Many years ago on 13 Wham news and you get to do some work next week with this speaker series, don't you?

>> I'm so excited and honored to have been invited to interview Britt, and.

>> I worked for you too long to tell you to get close to your microphone.

Oh, goodness.

>> Look at me.

I'm okay.

Yes.

Sorry.

Evan.

Yes.

I'm very excited.

I was honored to be asked to interview Britt.

And it's just a real honor to be a part of this.

>> Well, you know, I love seeing you.

It's great to have Norah here.

And Nancy Clark, who is the founder of the Rochester Speaker Series, is here.

Congratulations on a sold out event next week.

I was going to tell people all about it, but you already sold it out.

It's next Tuesday, 7 p.m.. Um, but things seem to be going well for the speaker series.

>> We are absolutely thrilled.

This is the second and final event in our inaugural season, and we have launched a 2026 2027 season, and subscription tickets are on sale for that.

Right now.

>> We'll talk a little bit more about that coming up here.

But first on The Vanishing Half here, I want to start with some housekeeping for Brit Bennett, because we're going to talk about some.

We're not going to give away too much here.

We can't give away the full story.

Um, it's a remarkable book and it takes you to a lot of different places in different generations within a family.

And I want to make sure I'm pronouncing the sisters names correctly.

I was going to say Vivian, because I think your audio reader says Vin, although some people have said vagueness.

What do you say, Britt?

What's their last name?

>> Yeah, I think Vin is how I've said it too.

>> Okay, so Vin is correct here.

Norma Holland why did you love this book?

>> Oh goodness.

I, I started reading this book and I instantly felt, um, given my own, uh, background heritage.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I come from a very racially mixed family.

I have, um, I'm Puerto Rican, um, you know, I have white ancestry, black ancestry, uh, in my family.

And the issue of identity growing up, I think a lot of what the twins felt, uh, is what I felt growing up.

Who am I, what am I?

And so I struggled with issues of identity very early on in my life.

Was I white?

Was I black?

Was I Latina?

Was I?

Um, and so, uh, you know, it instantly spoke to me.

It instantly spoke to me.

Um, where of course, my story, uh, divides from The Vanishing Half is, um, I also made choices just like the twins, but, um, I, I am who I am.

I don't, I haven't decided to pass for anything or divorce myself from who I really am.

And, uh, but what I really understand is that feeling of being part of the other, right?

Not feeling a part of really any of the three things that make up who I am, but feeling almost as if I'm in a category unto myself.

And whenever I meet other people who are also in between like me, I feel an instant kinship because we've all felt that feeling of, okay, well, because society in the United States loves to force people into boxes and they force you to want, they they want people to choose.

And I never want to choose.

I just want to be who I am.

>> When I found out that you were going to be the one to interview Brit, and I'm reading this book, going Norma is perfect because the conversations you and I have had over the years have moved into different territories, sometimes about how I've never met anybody who just celebrates who you are more than you perhaps, and and your Puerto Rican heritage.

And you know, the heritage on your dad's side and how you're proud of all of those things and you never hide from that.

I've also seen you take some, you know, viewers on television can be rough.

People can be rude, people can be bigoted.

Sure.

And I've seen you take some stuff that I will never be able to relate to myself.

And so that broke my heart, but I, I wonder if you feel like you're more fully comfortable and sort of formed at this point in your life?

>> I think.

So I really do.

I think maybe it's turning 50, but also, I think the fact that we as a, as a culture and I think younger people today, they just get it right.

I think we can all be who we want to be.

Um, no matter what that means.

Because as we read in the book, there's so many different kinds of identities that we're talking about.

It's not just racial, it's not just cultural.

Um, but I think people today, by and large, just, they are more comfortable with who they are.

I'm not saying it's easy and I'm not saying society makes it any easier for us to be who we are, but I think that we don't feel there's there's not a feeling, I think, of a need to.

There's this not a need to be like binary about things.

I think people feel comfortable being in the middle.

And I know I do, and I see that more and more with young people today.

And that's very, um, something that makes me very happy because I have children who will also grapple with some identity, uh, with who they are as well.

>> So Britt, this is a book that I think resist the urge to make anything too pat to put any something in too tidy an ending or to kind of have this realization, whether it's the cousins or the sisters themselves and everything sort of gets healed perfectly.

Um, it is complex.

It explores how painful and difficult and sort of the constant self assessment and reassessment or frankly, you write about what it feels like to think about your mother as a liar or denying your own identity.

How much did you want to resist the urge to give anybody too easy an ending or too easy a story?

With this?

>> Yeah, well, thank you for that.

Um, excuse me, I, I never want to be a moralizing type of writer.

I just think that's actually not interesting to read or to write as when you can feel that the author, um, is coming from a place of judgment or has already made up their minds about how they feel about the characters.

So I knew I didn't want to approach the book from that vantage point.

I was really interested in that complexity of this kind of in-between space that you both have been speaking about, and even just the idea of that, you know, I think part of the American mythology is sort of the idea that you can create yourself.

And what does it mean to sort of create yourself?

I think people do that in lots of different ways, not necessarily racial passing, but people sort of fashion a self-mythology all the time.

And it felt deeply American to me.

Um, at the same time, what does it mean to accept parts of yourself or reject parts of yourself, or hide parts of yourself?

And just the complexity of that, that, uh, I think very natural inclination to try to create yourself or, or be the person that you want to be versus your loyalty or your ties to your community and your family.

>> You have said in interviews that the town of Mallard came from a conversation that you had with your mom.

Can you tell us about that?

>> Yeah, my mom's from Louisiana, and she was talking to me about these towns.

She remembered hearing about as a girl where people were very, very light skinned.

And I'm from California, so I had no, cultural connection to that or any knowledge about these places even existing.

So I just kind of made a note to myself to look into it further.

And after I'd finished my first book and I started to think about what I wanted to do next, I started to research these, these communities and discovered that they did in fact exist.

And they were kind of these third spaces unto themselves.

So I, I guess, rode into that real history.

But I also wanted to create my own mythology around it and create my own characters that were emerging from this place and deciding to take two very different paths in life.

>> The book opens with this scene of a woman noticed by a man in the town walking alongside the road with what he presumes to be her daughter, and she.

The daughter is very dark skinned, and the way that the man talks about the daughter was almost breathtaking to me in the way that, um, that I would associate white people who are either extremely racist or fixated on race or have assumptions about what blackness means, or the, the skin tones mean.

But he is a resident of Mallard, and this is a town that has a certain view of, or I think, a colourism, as you would put it.

Um, and it's a very jarring opening just for that reason.

In fact, I think he used the term blue black, which was not a term that I was familiar with.

But why did you decide to set it in this way that avoided some of the more typical ideas about, um, what black people have experienced from white people, from sort of white antagonists?

Why set it this way?

>> Well, I mean, as far as the opening, I, I knew from the beginning that I wanted to really establish where you are.

Like, I've kind of crash landed the reader in this place that they don't expect to necessarily find themselves.

And it's a community that has very specific rules.

And those rules are policed very intently.

And I wanted to immediately just sort of introduce you to those rules of the community.

And I also just like as a reader, I love a book that starts with somebody who's like mysteriously returned from somewhere.

So, um, I think there was like a pleasure in that of who's this woman?

Why is she here?

What's what's the deal with the kid?

So there's an intrigue around that.

Um, but also, yeah, I wanted to immediately establish what the values of this community are.

And so you immediately know, oh, this is going to be really bad for this kid.

If this kid has to be here.

Um, so that was kind of what I was thinking about for the opening, but I was just interested in writing a story about race that wasn't really about centering whiteness or white people, or the perspectives of white people.

To be honest.

Um, of course, whiteness is a, a specter that sort of is over hovers over the story.

But to me, this is really a book about a black community that is really fractured and a black family that is really fractured and how is it possible for those different pieces of this family to kind of find their way back to each other?

>> Yeah.

You've said that you've always thought that the most interesting thing to happen to black people is not necessarily white people.

It's what happens within a black community.

I mean, that certainly is at the core of this book.

Is that fair?

>> Yeah, I think that that's fair.

Um, I, yeah, I was, it was really, you know, like I said, the book really started with my mom's experience growing up in Louisiana and her experience of color and colorism and thinking about setting the book within that specific community.

I didn't know at the time that the book was going to leave that town, or that it was going to become multi-generational, and it was going to, you know, take place in all these different parts of the country.

I never set out to do that.

I just really thought it was going to just be in this one little small town.

Um, but from the beginning, that was just sort of my intention was to explore the implications of coming from a community like this and, and what that does to you throughout the rest of your life to grow up in a place like this.

>> Um.

>> Before we get back into some of the themes here, I also want to ask you if you're surprised at in any way at the success of, of this book, you know, the mother's comes out in 2016 and it's, it's on the bestseller list.

It's critically acclaimed.

And this comes out at a time where it wasn't advantageous.

It actually came out in during the pandemic year.

And yet it blows up too.

And, you know, it's on the bestseller list.

You know, you're shortlisted for awards and, and the world is looking at you as like this incredible new voice in fiction.

Um, I wonder if any of that has caught you by surprise or if you've sort of settled into a groove now as a writer with that.

>> I mean, I think all of it caught me by surprise.

I think, you know, as you said, the timing of it, I remember not knowing what was going to be the state of bookstores.

And, you know, we were all in lockdown.

I was I was in New York.

So, uh, very intense experience of, of the pandemic and had no idea if anybody was going to want to be reading a book or just what the vibe was going to be when the book came out.

Um, so there's no part of me that ever expected this book to catch on in the way that it did or for even for me to still be talking about it, you know, six years later, the fact that people are still reading it and still are engaging with books.

So I would say all of it caught me by surprise.

>> Charlie writes in to say, Evan, I love to read and take suggestions from a few people.

And my daughter recommended The Vanishing Half.

I loved it, just the premise alone captivated me, but the many unexpected plot twists kept me up late until the book fell on my chest.

It was one of those rare books where I'd slow down my reading, not wanting the book to end.

Thank you.

Brit Bennett.

Um, I'm sure you get a lot of that these days.

That doesn't get old, does it?

Britt.

>> No, I mean, that's really sweet and I, and I don't take it for granted because there's so many things that could be capturing anyone's attention at any given moment.

And especially now that, you know, we're not it's not lockdown anymore.

People could be doing a million other things and traveling and going to sports or whatever.

So for people to, you know, devote their, their scant free time reading my book is, is not something I take for granted at all.

>> We're talking to acclaimed author Brit Bennett, who is coming to Rochester as part of the Rochester Speaker Series.

One week from tonight.

The event is, sad to say, sold out already, but they have big plans here.

And Nancy Clots, just briefly here for people who are not familiar with the series, it's relatively new.

Um, tell people what the series is all about and what you might may have planned coming up here.

>> Yes.

Our mission is to bring best selling authors and artists and thought leaders to Rochester in person.

We really value community gathering over a shared love of stories.

We launched our inaugural season in 2025, 2026, and our upcoming season 2026 2027 has just been announced, and we are very excited about the authors who will be here for that as well.

>> More information online.

And we have been blessed to have a chance to talk to the authors beforehand, and I hope we can continue to do that, because you're aiming high in in this series, Nancy, and so far so good, I think.

>> Yes, we've just been really overwhelmed with the community response.

It has been amazing and we are thrilled to have this level of support for these kinds of literary arts activities.

>> I always hesitate to ask this of authors, but I do have to ask Britt because, um, I mean, I remember years ago when the first one of my first jobs out of school, I was covering the studio release of the first Harry Potter movie, and the onion headline was new Harry Potter movie opens kids minds to the magic of not reading.

And, you know, I mean, like, so we can joke.

But then again, every author can maybe dream about the idea that maybe a streaming series or, or maybe a movie.

And there's, I mean, I don't know where things stand with, with your work on, um, the book so far, Britt.

But I keep hearing rumblings that people are bidding for you.

So can you give us any update there?

>> Um, I actually do not have any update.

Um, I the machinations of Hollywood are very mysterious to me.

So, um, I, yeah, I don't have any update about adaptation, but that would, you know, I think it's exciting for any author to kind of see your work translated.

I imagine it's very scary.

I've never gotten to that point in my work where I've seen somebody else sort of, uh, kind of do their bidding with my book.

So I think that that would be a little bit scary to imagine.

And you know, when you're, when you're a novelist, you are kind of the dictator of the world that you've created.

So to hand it off to Hollywood, which is so much of, you know, a work by committee, it's just, you know, hundreds and thousands of people involved in whatever project.

I think that that's a little nerve wracking, but I think it's exciting because it does bring a new audience to your work.

And, you know, people who may not rush to grab it from the bookstore might watch it, and then they might want to read the book.

>> Right here will be the worst question of the hour.

But I'm just going to ask, have you thought about who might play Desiree and Stella in your mind?

Do you have people in your mind?

>> Um, I don't I have been asked that question a lot and I always thought it would be exciting to kind of discover like a new actor or some kind of, um, an up and coming person.

Like, I think that would be really fun.

And I, but I think it's, yeah, it's kind of challenging because you have twins and, you know, are you going to have one person play both roles or are you going to.

I know now they can do like CGI with twins where they'll have like two different actors, but kind of make them look like twins.

Um, so I've had, you know, conversations about that type of thing, but I have no idea.

So it would be exciting to see.

>> Um, I was thinking Brent what was the, what was the name of the movie with, uh, Michael?

Um, Michael Bessent.

Michael B Jordan um, sinners.

>> O sinners.

>> Yeah.

He played both characters.

>> Yeah.

>> Right.

But isn't it something like so yeah, I mean, they can do that, but I remember watching the film and thinking, wow, wait, oh, wait, he's two different people, but he's played them so convincingly that they were two different people in my head.

>> You only got one Oscar for it.

>> Yeah, >> Yeah, there you go.

>> Yes, indeed.

So yeah.

So I guess anything's possible.

>> Anything's possible.

I can't wait, though.

I'm so excited for Brent.

>> Um, and so let me get to some of the big themes in the book.

And then we're going to kind of drill into some of the plot again, without giving away too much, but um, as much as Charlie, I think is right to say there's, there's twists, there's some really interesting twists and things that happen.

It's a book that to me takes its time.

It travels throughout time and generations.

It moves in a different parts of the country.

It tells its story very carefully and very thoughtfully.

Um, so anyway, that was my interpretation of it.

But the bigger theme of passing is one that I wanted to ask Britt about.

So passing is a subject that has been occasionally covered in, um, in literature and in general, when you started conceiving of this idea of The Vanishing Half, how much are you aware of what's already been written?

How much are you looking to sort of either build on certain themes or to create entirely new kind of themes from whole cloth?

>> Yeah.

I mean, I've read, you know, texts like Passing by Nella Larsen.

I think that's probably one of the most iconic books about passing.

Um, so I'd read, I'd read books like that.

Um, and some more contemporary works had taken on those themes, but I just, I had kind of a basic understanding of it.

But when I did more reading about it, I think the thing I just kept remained fascinated by was just the sheer unknowability of passing.

Um, because, you know, if you are someone who has successfully passed, then nobody will ever know that you did it.

So we have no cataloging of all the people who have passed.

Like there's no there's no accounting for it.

The only people whose stories we have are people who have revealed themselves or people you know, people have made deathbed confessions or people who've been discovered, or a lot of people who would pass for a job and then they would, you know, they would be white at work, and then they would come home and they would be black again.

Like there are all these different ways that people experience passing.

A lot of people, I think it was moment to moment.

It wasn't so much.

It wasn't as dramatic of an overhaul as as Stella.

Um, completely disappearing into the white world.

My understanding is that that was far rarer than a person who, hey, I'll get paid more at my job if I'm white, so I'll be white at work.

Like that was a bit more common.

But as I started reading about it, I just became really fascinated with this phenomenon that cannot, can never the, the very nature of it is that it cannot be known.

So what does that mean to kind of write about some type of type of thing like that?

Um, so it became interesting to read, to do like a little bit of research into it and read some of these accounts and to think about, I think what was lost by people.

I think often when we talk about passing, we think about what people gain of the access that they gain or the privilege, the wealth, the safety, the security.

Like we can understand intellectually why people might have passed and the, you know, mid 20th century.

Um, but I think sometimes we focus less on all the things that they lost in order to gain that.

>> Um.

>> We're talking to Brit Bennett, the author of the The Vanishing Half.

And if you're just joining us, the passing that British talking about in her book, it would be one thing to write about the story of a black woman who vanishes into the white world, as Brit describes and has happens here.

It's another for that person to be the twin sister of someone who does not decide to do that, and doesn't, and ends up with a very different life.

And so that's part of what this book is about.

Um, and the Noem, there's, it's one thing to say, you know, you can try to pass or try to convince somebody that you are one thing.

It's another.

When society makes assumptions about you without knowing.

And that's one thing.

I mean, like in your life has, have people said to you either after a broadcast or after an event that they didn't know about the black part of your heritage?

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

And I wonder how that hits you.

>> I, I'm always, um, sometimes the reaction was, oh, oh.

And I thought, and what's wrong with that?

>> What's at the end of this sentence?

>> Yeah, there's, there's, um, you know, black is not a dirty word, you see.

And so, um, it's nothing for me to be.

It's nothing I'm ashamed of.

Why would I, it's who I am, it's what I am.

I'm a big mix.

I'm a big mix.

Like so many Americans, I have so much.

If you look at, you know, if we were to all spit into a test tube and get it, you know, uh, get a report out, it all might be surprised by what we find out.

Um, so there's no part of me that I'm ashamed of.

Right?

And so yes, I say yes, I am, and then I'm, I'm this and I'm that and, and I choose to be who I am and I choose to be myself.

Now they're, um, you know, as a result, I, sometimes don't, I hadn't, I hadn't always felt accepted by different groups.

Um, because maybe I'm not, you know, wide enough for some not black enough for others, not Hispanic enough for others.

And believe you me, the things people have said are very cruel.

Um, I've had people say to me, oh, I thought, you know, I thought you were pretending to be this or pretending to be that.

And I thought, really?

You thought I was pretending?

Well, gee, I must be speaking Spanish.

You know, very terribly if you think I'm pretending.

But but it was really.

It was sad.

It's sad, you know what I'm saying?

And I've had people in very high positions of leadership in this city say those things to me, and it's pretty sad.

>> And occasionally I've, um, back when we used to work together side by side every day.

>> Yeah.

>> I've seen people ask you straight out like, well, like, what are you.

>> Yeah, I love that question.

>> What are you like?

I don't, I always cringe when you would get like that question because I'm like, oh my God.

>> I joke and I go, you got time?

>> Well, you show a lot of grace.

You show a probably more grace than sometimes people deserve their.

How do you interpret it when people are genuinely curious about your own sort of background?

>> Um.

>> Do you think it's none of their business?

Do you think that they're.

>> You know, I find like if you're, if you come to me with a, from a place of curiosity, if you ask questions with genuine curiosity because you're interested, um, I'm willing to have that conversation, but, and we can't always know what people mean when they ask questions.

So, um, sometimes if I don't know you very well, I might deflect the conversation.

But at this age I'm at now, I just flat out say it because I really it's not I'm not really worried about what you're thinking or and I certainly am not going to be put into a box that you want to put me in.

So, you know, many times I maybe I'm a little flip about it because I'm, you know, I'm this and I'm that and I'm who I am 100% who I am me.

Right.

And so, um, because people, I think want you to choose, right?

There's always that box thing.

I hated the boxes filling out and, you know, forms, you know, this and that.

Um, I want to make my own box.

Right.

Um, so I sometimes will deflect and and if I know you well enough, I'll tell you the whole story.

You got to hear the whole story.

>> Well, I love working alongside, I miss that.

>> Yeah.

Yeah, we had a we had a lot of fun.

You learn a lot about a person sitting next to them for four hours.

>> At a time.

Yes.

You definitely.

>> Learn a lot of.

>> Things, but I learned a lot about society, good and bad, and the way either people would email you, frankly, the way some executives talk to you.

>> Oh yeah, I always do.

I should be in therapy.

Uh, but and maybe I will one day, but.

Or I should write a book, but, um, there's a lot of stories that, uh, you know, um, I never want to come across as, as, you know, sounding as if I'm whining or I learned a lot.

I had wonderful experiences and some of them weren't great, right?

But they, they make up who I am right now.

And, and one day, maybe that's a book I'll write.

>> Well, listen.

>> I don't know if it's going to be a New York Times bestseller like Brits, though.

>> There's not a whole lot of those.

That's why we have Brit Bennett today.

That's why she's coming to the Rochester Speaker Series.

Norma Holland could fill this chair any day you want.

By the way, you ought to come.

Well, you really should.

I mean, like.

>> He's much nicer to me now that I'm.

>> Getting out of here.

>> Get out of here.

Um, but I on that note, um, there's something that Brit has said in interviews that I think is valuable to hear from the author herself.

Brit, you have said that there is a toxic ideology of light skinned being better in society.

And part of the part of the question in the book is, how do you sort of shake that as you get older?

But outside of the book in general, how do how do we start to shake that as a society?

>> I mean, I don't know that I have the answer to that.

Um, but yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I, I, like I said, I started this book from the, this kind of center of this community that believes in this ideology.

And I think for some of the characters, you know, I think, I think for some of the characters, it's very protective.

It's the idea that like for Stella, I think for her, it's not even that she thinks that being lighter is makes you more beautiful or some of these other things.

It's like for her, it's, it's, it's safety.

It's she wants to be safe.

She the twins like witnessed, um, this terrible violence when they were children that really kind of shook both of them into these different ways.

And I think for Stella, she's thinking, this is the only way that I can get to safety is by kind of leveraging my light skin and actually becoming white.

Just sort of taking it one step further.

Um, so I think for her, that's what it means.

Um, but I think for a lot of these characters, I think for Desiree, on the other hand, she kind of feels that the proximity to whiteness is actually not that protective because she's seen terrible things happen in Mallard where everybody is really light.

So if that can still happen here and it can still happen to light skinned people, then light skin actually doesn't protect you.

So I found it interesting to think how they could both kind of have these very different conclusions about what, what light skin affords them and the limitations of that.

So yeah, to me, that was kind of an interesting tension just between those sisters and how they kind of draw these very different conclusions from witnessing the same events as they were children.

>> Yeah.

And it's not like the twins were 15 before they left 15 years old.

And they had this fight about, well, should we try to pass?

I mean, for Stella, you've said that sometimes it's a small choice that leads to a sort of a big cascade of events.

And for Stella, it's it's passing for a job interview.

It's sort of an act of, of pragmatics that leads to that.

And I thought that was a very interesting choice as well as a writer, that this wasn't sort of necessarily a grand plan, but you can understand how in the frankly, often racist world of hiring and the assumptions in the hiring world, a person who feels like they could pass would see that advantage.

And I just thought that was a very real sort of relatable.

Go ahead, Norma.

>> I want to say something about the idea of the, you know, passing for the job and passing in general.

Um, it, um, sadly, uh, some of the, the biggest perpetrators of this colourism come from within the community.

Um, so I want to go back to the very beginning of the book.

Like, you know, Britt said, you, you put this, you know, you put Desiree, right, walking into town again.

And, and the harshest words you hear are from another man who's from that town.

And that's been my experience too, is some of the, the cruelest things that have been said about, you know, skin tone and, and color come from our own community.

Sadly.

And I'm talking about, you know, uh, the black community, but also Latino community.

Colorism exists in the Latino world as well.

And there's this myth, this belief that whiter is better or lighter is better.

And that's a, that's a, a real, a very real issue in communities.

Um, that, you know, though this is a work of fiction.

I know Britt knows this is, that's not fiction at all.

Like that's a very real thing that happens within communities of color where there is this feeling of like, you know, the, the paper bag, you know, test, uh, how dark are you compared to the paper bag?

And we've seen it in literature, we've seen it in films.

Um, this whole thing.

But it's sad.

It is sad.

I felt, I felt really, um, I felt sad for, um, for the characters in that sense.

I felt heartbroken for them.

>> I agree, but again, I'll throw in an observation I have as a reader and we'll see what Britt says about this.

Again, this is not a book where the two twin sisters, one decides to pass as white ends up going to LA, you know, the other does not pass as white.

Very different life.

And, uh, the book is not like, well, one's the bad sister, one's the good sister or Mallard is the bad town of misguided people.

Sure, sure.

There's a lot of empathy.

Yes.

You know, as a reader for the people who you read this stuff, the things that they said about, I think, Jude, at the beginning of the book, it's just so sad.

Yeah, it's shocking.

And sad.

And, and it is awful in a way.

Yeah.

But it's not a caricature of like good, bad, you know, simple characters.

>> Ingredients here.

>> Yeah.

That's how I saw it.

Anyway, my, my feeling.

Britt was you again resisted the urge to just give us a good sister and a bad sister, a bad town, misguided.

I mean, it's a lot more complex than that.

And I wonder if you can share a little bit of your thought process there.

>> Yeah.

I mean, I think, you know, as Norma was saying, people are, you know, very invested in hierarchies.

Wherever you find yourself, there's going to be a hierarchy within that hierarchy.

Um, and that's certainly the case in this book.

But I think also, I, I didn't want to demonize Stella for her choices because, you know, just like as a person, I'm like, who am I to say what I would do if I were, if I were in the same situation and the Jim Crow South and I needed a job, you know?

So I just like as a person, I and, and like I said, as an author, I just don't find it interesting to, to kind of judge my character.

Um, but I think also when I realized that the book was going to have different sort of, uh, geographical range, I was going to leave, uh, Mallard.

I realized that I also, I didn't want to judge this town because I think as a person who comes from, you know, I guess the coasts, I grew up in California.

I'm in New York now.

I think that there can be this kind of patronizing attitude towards the South and this idea that, oh, those people there are the problem that that's where the racists live.

And it's like, well, guess what?

When Stella gets to LA, you know, there's going to be a huge hubbub about this black family trying to move into her, you know, cul de sac.

So that's I wanted to kind of follow the, the ways that race was acting on these characters.

Even once they've left this place.

You know, I introduced you to this town and you're thinking, oh, this is a really intense and harsh place.

But even once they leave, they're, they're going to experience race in these different ways.

So I didn't want to uniquely demonize Mallard or uniquely demonize the people who live there, because I don't think that that's really the experience of race in this country or in this world.

It's not restricted to one geographical location.

It's something that's acted on you and that you experience wherever you are.

>> We're talking to Brit Bennett, author of the National Book Award nominated novel The Vanishing Half, and that is just one of the accolades that Britt has piled up for her work.

She is coming to Rochester next week as a guest of the Rochester Speaker Series.

My colleague Norma Holland, who is with us, will be interviewing Britt next Tuesday night for an event that is sadly sold out already.

But there's much more to come with the speaker series coming up here, and they're trying to bring in some of the really decorated authors in this country, and you're already seeing that.

So we got to take our only break of the hour.

We're going to come back.

And there's a few more things in this book that I want to crack open without giving away too much here, I'm talking to Brit Bennett about The Vanishing Half.

I'm Evan Dawson Wednesday on the next Connections, a chance to hear episode four of the Move to Include podcast series from our partners at WXXI.

They have been doing an outstanding job on the question of accessibility in a lot of different spaces.

Self-Direction, and more.

We're talking about accessibility in education, and you'll hear episode four Wednesday.

>> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Mary Cariola center, supporting residents to become active members of the community.

From developing life skills to gaining independence.

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More online at.

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Org.

>> During this brief break Norma Holland.

Can I can I share what Nora said to me?

Because like, we were kind of each flipping through going, what can we talk about without giving too much away?

And you said there is a number of times in the book where you literally kind of went like, like, whoa.

>> Whoa, I put the book down and I went, I gotta read that again.

It's so good, you know?

Um, and there's.

>> So many layers.

All I can say is that if you like what you think this book is about, it is.

Yes, yes, it's about that and so much more like you have to pick up the book and read it because it's a many layered parfait.

I mean, literally, there's so many characters and each character is so rich.

And, um, and when we talk about identity in this book, there are so many identities, it's all I'm going to say, so many identities that are, um.

>> I don't trust you to ask a question that doesn't give like a huge plot point away or like a big twist.

>> Is that so?

Yeah.

Ye of little faith.

>> No, go for it.

Because I've got a couple things I want.

>> To call it a parfait.

Evan.

>> I. Know there are some incredible twists here.

Um, yeah.

And so while I give you, if you want to, if you want to come by, I'm just ask Britt about one thing that.

>> Yeah.

>> Please do.

Again, going back to the nuance of the characters, I want to imagine what it would be like to be growing up thinking that, you know, your identity, that you know your background, and then for Kennedy starting to figure out like, you know, for for various reasons, again, I'm not trying to give away too much here.

Kennedy and Jude, very different lives and very different situations.

And, uh, very different skin tones and very different conceptions of selves.

But for Kennedy, who wants to be an actor and sees her life a certain way to start to confront that maybe your mother's been lying to you and to try to maybe pin your mother on that, and to realize that my mom is definitely now avoiding what I'm trying to get at here, and to start to wonder if it's going to fall apart again.

You didn't make this this 30 year old character who is been able to pass herself without knowing it, to become like this stuck up, uh.

Antagonist.

Villain, character per se.

Again, it's so much richer than that.

But I'm trying to figure out, like, Britt, what would I do if everything I kind of thought I knew all of a sudden was not what I knew, and I didn't know if I could even trust my parents or if I even knew myself anymore.

Take me through how you thought about scenes like that in a character who would be going through that.

>> Yeah, I mean, I liked the idea of Kennedy, you know, like you said, not being a total villain, but just being a little bit of a brat.

You know, she just kind of grows up with a lot, like everything kind of handed to her.

And she but there's something fundamentally missing from her life because I think so much of what it means to, to pass, at least how I've conceived of it is there's so much that you have to hide about yourself.

Like you can't just tell stories about your childhood.

You can't, you know, she can't even really acknowledge that she has this twin sister.

And so you have like this, this relationship with your mother that's fundamentally strained and distant, and you kind of have this sense that something is not quite right, but you don't really know what it is.

And that's something that lingers in your life as you're as you're aging.

So the moment when she starts to kind of piece this together, she realizes, oh, this is why there's been something fundamentally off about this relationship and about just her mother.

And the way that her mother is, is such a hidden person from her.

So I found that to be really interesting.

And then I just think that question of how much does this knowledge change about how you see yourself?

Because I think that's what I found so interesting about, you know, stories where people will do 23 and me or they'll do some type of genetic testing and they'll discover something about their family history that they didn't know.

And for some people, that makes them want to dive all the way in.

And to discovering this new culture.

And they want to visit the country and they want to learn the language and all of this.

And for some people, it's just like, nope, I was, you know, I was raised Italian.

I still believe myself to be Italian.

Like, I don't care what that piece of paper says.

That has nothing to do with me.

And I found that so interesting because I think it's yeah, it's a question of like, how would I react if I, you know, learned something really shocking about my family history?

Would that fundamentally change my sense of myself?

Or would it just be kind of a piece of trivia that I would just kind of file away in the back of my mind and not think about again?

And I think it really depends on who you are and how you react to it.

But I found that question to be really interesting of what this character specifically would do when faced with this information and the complexity of how she would feel.

>> Isn't it interesting?

We live in a time where, you know, not only can you find out what genetic makeup you have, but we take tests now to determine our likelihood of developing certain illnesses.

So we get to know ourselves at that even cellular level, right?

That like the medical level, right?

And so there's so much we can learn about ourselves.

And what would we do with that information?

Right?

Like that's a, it's a very interesting question.

Um, but, uh, no, I found that interesting.

Can I, can I ask my question without giving it away?

Evan.

>> Yeah.

>> I'm going to give away another plot detail in a moment.

I can't.

No.

>> I'm not going to beat you to it.

>> I want to read a passage in.

>> A moment.

Hold on.

I gotta.

>> Tell you, not only this book again, I called it a parfait because there's so many layers.

But you you, um, one of your characters.

I'm just going to say one, uh, is trans, and that's where I, I really loved how you treated this character.

Um, has anyone, has anyone, have people talked to you about that?

Um, how lovingly and respectfully you treat this trans character?

>> Yeah.

I mean, I've, I think I, you know, tried my best to, you know, I mean, I think I keep saying, like so much of this book is writing outside of my personal experience because of so many characters are moving from one identity to another, right?

Um, so even though I'm like kind of nominally writing about black people, like most of these experiences are not mine.

Um, so something I was aware of and I wanted to, to kind of handle with sensitivity.

And I think it's been really gratifying, particularly to hear from trans readers, um, many of whom I think the kind of saddest part was a lot of characters or a lot of trans readers who kind of braced their themselves when they got to this character because they're just used to encountering.

If you encounter a trans character in a book, like something bad is going to happen to that person, there's going to be some type of trauma that they're going to have to experience an act of violence that they're going to have to experience.

They're going to die.

They're not gonna make it to the end of the book.

Um, so I think a lot of readers told me that, that they kind of like, you know, physically braced when they sort of, reached this point in the book and they never wanted to write that kind of storyline or that kind of character.

I just wanted to think about this other character who's also moving through the world with a complex idea of identity, like the twins.

And in his case, his journey is moving towards himself.

It's not moving away from who he is.

Um, versus Stella's journey is kind of moving away from herself in this in this way.

So there was a way that those storylines just kind of reverberated off of each other in a way that I found to be really just like interesting and fun to write.

>> I just want to thank you for that.

I just, I, I want to thank you for that.

I think it was beautiful the way you treated this character as not being tragic.

Um, but as being fully human.

And I loved it.

>> And vital, I mean.

>> Vital, vital.

>> To the development of, of, of, uh, character and everything.

It was, it's a central character.

>> Um, the passage I want to read, um, comes from a point where the cousins are, are talking about their own identities and Jude is listening to Kenny.

So Jude is, um, a woman now who is never wrestled with the fact that she's a black woman.

Um, and Kennedy is again, learning about herself.

And so this is where Kennedy is thinking about Mallard and this, this description is amazing.

So Jude walked Kennedy down to the lobby, and Kennedy slowly wrapped her scarf around her neck.

What's it like, Kennedy?

Kennedy said Mallard.

She had imagined a town like Mayberry folksy, homey women leaving pies to cool on their windowsills, a town so small that everybody knew your name.

In a different life.

She might have visited over the summer.

She could have played with Jude in front of their grandmother's house, but Jude just laughed.

Awful, she said.

They only like ligh * out there.

You'd fit right in.

She said it so offhandedly that Kennedy almost didn't realize it.

I'm not a, she said.

Jude laughed again, this time uneasily.

Well, your mother is, she said.

So.

So that makes you one two.

It doesn't make me anything, Kennedy said.

My father's white, you know, and you don't get to show up and tell me what I am.

It wasn't a race thing.

She just hated the idea of anyone telling her who she had to be.

She was like her mother in that way.

If she'd been born black, she would have been perfectly happy about it.

But she wasn't.

And who was Jude to tell her that she was something that she was not?

Nothing had changed, really.

She'd learned one thing about her mother.

But what did that amount to when you looked at the totality of her life, a single detail had been moved and replaced, swapping out one brick wouldn't change a house into a fire station.

She was still herself.

Nothing had changed.

Nothing had changed at all.

I'm reading that section and I'm going, oh, things have changed.

Come on.

Like, come on, you know?

And I wonder, like, if you're if you're like channeling is Jude is channeling Britt, they're going like Kennedy, you're in denial here.

Where were you at there?

Britt.

>> I mean, I think they're both right.

They're both wrong.

You know, it's like, I.

>> Think I. Said.

>>.

>> I.

>> I believe that, you know, I, I, I, I'm generally oriented towards thinking like, yeah, you can determine how who you are, you can say how you identify that's like an individual choice.

Like I do believe that.

Um, but also at the same time, like, yeah, I don't believe that nothing has changed for her.

I think that she's spiraling a little bit because she's realized this fact of hers.

And I think, you know, it's also just, I think part of it is, is the, there's something.

And I think, you know, in the history of this country, there's something so totalizing about blackness that's kind of unique of, you know, back to a one drop rule because it's the idea that, you know, you know, I, I remember I had a professor who would talk about, you know, everyone has a Cherokee grandmother, like everybody sort of self-identifies that way, but they don't think that that makes them a Cherokee.

You know, they don't think that that's.

But if you had a black grandmother, then that would make you black.

You know, that's like the way that we like, understand race.

And the professor was just like, it's more likely that you have a black grandmother than you have a Cherokee grandmother.

But that's not the way that we think about race in this country, because what would that mean for, you know, untold amounts of white people to discover that they have a black grandmother?

That would be something that would fundamentally shake them to their core.

I think a lot of people.

So I think that it is something that really shakes up Kennedy's sense of herself and her sense of her mother.

And you know, what it means to exist in this world that she thought was one way.

And she finds out it's another way.

But at the same time, I do I'm sympathetic to that idea that like discovering, you know, one detail about your family history doesn't have to be this kind of obliteration of yourself and this sense that everything you thought was true about yourself is not true.

I think that I think that a lot of that is, is kind of the way that we think about blackness as being, you know, still this kind of one drop ideology.

Um, but, but yeah, so I think they're both right.

I think they're both wrong.

And I've found that conversation to be really fun too, right?

Where Jude says this thing very casually, like she just thinks that obviously this is true about you.

And for Kennedy, it's not obvious and it's not something that she's really willing to accept, although it is something that continues to kind of she continues to live with it, even though she doesn't really want to face it.

>> Is it is it a threat to Kennedy in that moment?

Is that why she's denying it?

Does it threaten her?

>> I think, yeah, I think it threatens her sense of just herself and how she thought of where she existed in the world and what you thought about your family.

And, you know, now you're having questions about your parents marriage and all of these, your family history.

And, you know, Kennedy has this, um, she has like kind of a pivotal, I guess, a pivotal race moment when she's a child that I think also kind of reverberates throughout the book of her having this moment of kind of lashing out and racial aggression.

So to do that type of thing and then later think to yourself, oh, well, maybe I myself am black.

What does that mean?

Um, I think there's a lot going on, but I, I had a lot of fun writing that kind of Kennedy section because I didn't think originally that I was even going to really go into her, her perspective, but I just kept being like, what is, what is this character going to do with this like revelation?

Or what is she going to do with this knowledge?

And how is it going to change her?

And the idea that Kennedy is an actor, she's a person who is always playing a character, and she comes to this realization that's like, oh my God, what if I've been playing a character my whole life and I just didn't even know it?

>> Amazing.

>> Yeah, I love that.

Yeah.

It's unraveling a sweater, right?

Like you're.

Unraveling the thread is yeah, yeah, I love that you talk about blackness as all encompassing and that, you know, the one drop rule and all of that, that, you know, we've, we've often heard about, um.

>> You're going to have an amazing conversation.

>> I can't wait.

>> This is, um, I'm so excited for I can't wait.

I have so many questions about the other characters.

Yeah.

And how you conceived of them.

Britt.

And you know what you were thinking of when you wrote them?

I think it's very telling about the partners that each one of these characters picks and selects for her, for herself, for themselves.

And so I have questions about that.

And, um, a lot about I couldn't put the book down and I want to say something.

I haven't read a book from cover to cover in many years because I was reading kids books for my kids for so many years.

>> Right.

Seriously, a lot of kids books.

I wasn't reading.

>> Steinbeck or anything because of this and because of this series, I am.

>> Now like, I'm back books.

I am back.

I'm a book reader and I am back.

>> Bennett's got you back.

>> Yes she does.

>> I'm also reading The Mothers.

If you haven't picked up that book, that is another one that I can't put down.

>> Well, Brit Bennett, congratulations on all the success you've had with this.

I know Rochester is excited to see you for the sold out event next week, and you are generous to give us an hour of your time.

Thank you for doing that.

>> Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

>> Brit Bennett, the author of The Vanishing Half The Mother's.

As Norma said, among, um, some other interesting projects that would be a whole other conversation with Britt.

Uh, she's a National Book Award nominated novelist, and I wish we could tell you there were seats available next Tuesday.

There's not for Britt, but Nancy Clots for what you got coming up in the fall.

What do you want people to know going forward with the Rochester Speaker Series?

>> Yeah, I do want to just emphasize we're so excited to have Norma Holland interviewing Britt as part of this program.

And all of our energy is focused on making that as meaningful an event for the Rochester community as possible in the fall and spring of 2026 2027, we are hoping to maintain the same exciting level of programing, and we have Min Jin Lee coming in October 27th.

She's the author of pachinko.

We have Percival Everett, the most well known probably for James, coming in April.

On April 6th, 2027.

And we will close out our season with Lulu Miller, co-host of Radiolab award winning science journalist.

Wow.

>> So you got a lot coming up here.

Congratulations on that.

Have fun with that.

Thanks for coming in today, Norma Holland.

Have fun next week.

>> Thank you friends.

>> I love you.

Thanks for being here.

>> Love you too.

>> And from all of us at Connections, thanks for being with us.

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