The Vanishing Half: A Novel

By 1985, Kennedy is struggling for acting roles in New York theater. She’s begun dating a Black physicist. Stella is disturbed by her daughter’s choice of partner. Kennedy pursues the romance, in part, because she’s never forgotten Jude’s claim that they are cousins. Kennedy is attempting to activate some awareness of her Black heritage, but it doesn’t work. She thinks, “If dating Frantz had been some type of experiment, then it had failed terribly. Loving a black man only made her feel whiter than before” (277).

Kennedy finally lands a role in a musical but still needs to work at a coffee shop to pay the bills. One day, Jude and Reese walk into the shop. Jude says that she saw a flyer advertising Kennedy’s show. She explains that they are in New York so that Reese can have a special kind of surgery. Jude and Reese plan to attend Kennedy’s next performance. Afterward, Jude cryptically says she has something she wants to show Kennedy. Still obsessed with learning about her mother’s secret past, Kennedy agrees to the meeting: “Jude was offering her a key to understanding her mother. How could she say no to that so easily?” (282).