Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
41'inci Uluslararası Amerikan Etütleri Konferansı , Ankara, Türkiye, 16 - 18 Kasım 2022, ss.8
Identities in Transit: Bret Bennett’s Vanishing Half
Brit
Bennett’s Vanishing Half (2020) explores
the issues of race and gender as they are interwoven into the generations of a
light-skinned black family. The novel begins in the 1950s by introducing race
and its many shades and colors, and with the second generation, it adds to the
complexities of race by launching transgender matters. Closely embedded in
their familial and national past, her characters defy definitions and
categorizations, demonstrating the intersections of historical and personal
trans- sites. Bennett sets up an example of colorism through the setting,
Mallard, a town where only light-skinned black people live and lighter skin is
valued. The Mallard inhabitants’ obsession for light skin often competes with
white people’s racism. The author demonstrates the complexities and shades of
race and racism in the United States further as one of the identical twin
protagonists passes for white and the other marries a dark black man. Though
the sisters seem to be separated into the clear white and black definitions, the
rest of the novel shows that nothing is indeed so clearly defined because not
only the lives of the twin sisters but also those of their daughters are
further interrelated. With this second generation Bennett also problematizes
gender. Though the critics focus mostly
on the complexities of race in the novel, with the introduction of a
transgender character, the issues of transgender and gender as performance
become closely interwoven with race and race as performance. This paper will
examine passing, colorism and transgender as trans- sites as they offer both
liberation and exclusion to the characters in Vanishing Half.