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Jan 09, 2021 Letitia rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2021-to-read

A story of twins, a story of race, a story of women and motherhood and evolving culture. I really enjoyed this. The characters were so specific and so well-written. They were so well-written, in fact, that I found Kennedy downright unbearable. Her portions of the story are necessary and impactful but damn it's hard to read in her voice. There are powerful moments where we sympathize with her, and understand what made her her (this book does that very well with all of its characters, disallowing ...more

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Feb 21, 2021 Liz Murray rated it it was amazing

Shelves: us-south, family, racism, 2021, colorism

An expertly chosen gift for my birthday. It came highly recommended and I recommend it just the same.

It is in many ways an epic tale however it focuses on the lifespan of two generations. The twins who are at the center have a daughter each. One stays married and the other leaves an abusive relationship when her daughter is 7. The twins are born into a tiny Louisiana"colored" town that praises itself on how white its people look. A tragic event mars their childhood and the sisters run away to N An expertly chosen gift for my birthday. It came highly recommended and I recommend it just the same.

It is in many ways an epic tale however it focuses on the lifespan of two generations. The twins who are at the center have a daughter each. One stays married and the other leaves an abusive relationship when her daughter is 7. The twins are born into a tiny Louisiana"colored" town that praises itself on how white its people look. A tragic event mars their childhood and the sisters run away to New Orleans at the age of 16. The next we read about them is Desiree coming back to Mallard with her seven year old daughter in tow. Jude, her daughter, is "blueblack...like she flown direct from Africa" while Desiree is described as having skin the color of "sand barely wet".

Stella and Desiree have parted ways and as readers we know from the blurb that Stella has chosen to pass as white with her husband, daughter and neighbors knowing nothing about her past. In an interview with Vulture Brit Bennett talks about characters stretching themselves to their limits. Stella is the one who has stretched herself individually to a greater degree while it is Desiree's daughter Jude who attests to Desiree marrying a man with skin a lot darker than her own. Coming back to Mallard with Jude from a life in Washington DC is not what Desiree would have imagined as a young girl. She had been desperate to leave the small town. She stays there however and carves an adult life out for herself. Jude has a difficult time at school and is shunned by many of the students. She leaves Mallard to go to LA for university. Here she takes up medical studies and becomes a doctor.

Brit Bennett makes a comment in the same article from Vulture that if we can perform whiteness what does that tell us about being white? This is a central question in the narrative. A tension arises for Stella when a Black family move in to her all-white suburb in LA. She is scared of being unveiled while at the same time she develops a friendship with the woman who moves in. I'm not in a position of being able to write much about colorism so anything I say about it is going to be surface level and only experienced from a distance. This brought the topic to a life I mightn't have felt before. It is an intimate portrayal of colorism and performing whiteness.

I feel that I know less about Desiree and Stella's daughter than I do about Stella and Jude. Stella and Jude are living in skin at the limits of white and Black. For Jude though she is true to who she is and she isn't taking on a new character, nor would she want to. She has grown up being bullied for her skin color but in LA she doesn't stand out as much. She becomes friends and then lovers with a man who is living in transition. He left his small town because he/she was kicked out of home. In LA Reese lives his truth as a man. The love between Jude and Reese is beautifully written and longstanding.

There is deep sensitivity for the characters in this book and the unease Stella must have lived with on a daily basis is expertly conveyed. It left me with a creepy feeling under the skin. As the story unfolds we learn more and more details of how Stella got to where she is. It was a matter of small steps that ended up in one huge one. Desiree's life is a lot less eventful. She (re)finds love with a teenage crush and lives with her mother until her mother's death. The cost to Stella was potentially huge but this isn't really remedied.

The story isn't wrapped up in a neat ending with everything being resolved, as happens in life. I did find myself slowing down near the end as I wanted to savor the language and be in that world for a bit longer. Jude becomes more or less the main character as the story comes to a close and her evolving love and relationship with Reese is full of sweetness. ...more

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Oct 13, 2020 Pang rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club, fiction, nyt-recommended, 2020, barack-s-best

You didn't just find a self out there waiting -- you had to make one. You had to create who you wanted to be.

It has been a long time since I read something for fun. I would pick up books, but never really feel compelled to finish them. Until this book.

It's almost timely, as the subject of being happy has been coming up in my life in recent days. What does it mean to be happy with one self? Happiness is of course relative. There's a Thai saying about a frog who lives under a coconut shell. He's h ...more

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