How their lives collide makes for a riveting, thought-provoking read.
So many of us have read The Vanishing Half, the story of Stella Vignes, who abandons her identical twin sister, Desiree, to move to Los Angeles and start a new life as a white woman. Looking for a follow-up? Try Nella Larsen’s novel Passing— adapted into an Academy Award–nominated film by Rebecca Hall in 2021—which explores a similar premise and themes. Living in Harlem during the Jazz Age , the main character, Irene, runs into her old childhood friend Clare. While Irene, a light-skinned Black woman, occasionally passes as white when she needs to, Clare passes all the time. More confusingly, she’s married to a vehement racist. How their lives collide makes for a riveting, thought-provoking read.