With a panoptic view, Toni Morrison interrogated the pernicious effects of colourism throughout her oeuvre. These aspects of racial politics have long been explored in US fiction. Equally, Stella’s concerted efforts to “masquerade” as white to gain safety and opportunity underline how rigorously these things were – and still are – denied to people of colour.
It also draws attention to the dangerous value system within black communities that prizes lightness for its proximity to the authority of whiteness. While Desiree’s trajectory is rendered with tenderness, Stella’s decision to forge an existence in which she capitalises on her Caucasian features is the novel’s linchpin. Stella and Desiree’s struggles are elegantly and inventively echoed in the future challenges encountered by their children. Indeed, among the novel’s great technical accomplishments are the parallels it draws between characters’ experiences across the decades. With a brisk confidence, the narrative moves between periods, following the twins and their offspring from the 50s to the late 80s. Bennett’s second novel following 2016’s The Mothers largely occupies itself with the consequences of this radical move, which play out through the subsequent generation. Stella soon deserts Desiree, disappearing into a life in which she constructs a new identity and “passes” as white. As they make their perilous way in the Big Easy, their unity is unsettled.
Stella is bookish, biddable and somewhat dependent on her twin. The girls are convincingly characterised as polar opposites. Stella’s lie takes her into a deep and jagged introspection that threatens the life she has so painstakingly built
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