One Book, One San Diego Book Discussion

Join us for a discussion about this year's One Book, One San Diego Selection The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. Check out the book through the library's catalog. 

A #1 New York Times Bestseller, The Vanishing Half is a historical fiction novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family—from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s—Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

Brit Bennett is the author of the New York Times–bestselling novel The Mothers; a finalist for the NBCC John Leonard Prize for the best first book, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award; and a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel.