The Vanishing Half Trivia Quiz

Answer: Brit Bennett

"The Vanishing Half", published in 2020, is a novel by Brit Bennett, which deals with the life of identical twins who were born in Mallard, a city founded to house clear skin people who would never be accepted as whites because they descended from blacks. The novel covers the decades of 1950s to 1990s. The sisters Desiree and Stella flee from home at age 16 hoping to live a different life. The novel shows how one of the twins accepts their origins and as the other lives in dire straits trying to hide her origin, paying a high price for her new identity.

Brit Bennett is an American author, born in 1989/1990 who received her undergraduate degree in English from Stanford University and her M.F.A from the University of Michigan. She published several non fiction essays and "The Vanishing Half" is her second novel.

Answer: Buchi Emecheta

"Second Class Citizen", 1974, is a novel by Buchi Emecheta, a Nigerian writer, who tells the story of Adah, a young woman of Ibo ethnicity from Ibuza in Nigeria, who dreams to study and move to the United Kingdom. The novel tells how she became a desirable wife, who managed to send her mediocre husband to the UK and then with many children also managed to move to the UK. Once there, she suffered all kinds of prejudice not only from the English but also from the Nigerian community. The book is somewhat autobiographical.

Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta (1944-2017), was born in Nigeria and moved to London in 1962, to join her husband. Her marriage was unhappy. She gave birth to five children in six years. At the age of 22, when pregnant with her fifth child she left her husband. She faced all kinds of prejudice. While working to bring up the children, she continued her studies, earning a B.Sc. degree in Sociology from the University of London in 1972. She was the author of more than 20 books, including children's books. Her fictional works are focused on racial and sexual discrimination.

Answer: Kamila Shamsie

Kamila Shamsie was born in 1973 in Pakistan to a family of writers and journalists. She was educated in Pakistan and then studied Creative Writing in the United States. Later, she moved to England and today has a double citizenship: English and Pakistani. Her first novel, "In the City by the Sea", was written while she was still in college.

In 2018, she received the Women's Prize for Fiction for the book "Home Fire" released in 2017, her seventh novel. The novel follows two English Muslim families of Pakistani origin. One family, the Pashas, was composed of twin siblings who were brought up by their older sister after their mother's death. The twins never met their jihadist father. They followed Muslim customs and the drama begins when one of the twins decides to join the ISIS movement to discover her father's story. The second family story is about Karamate Lone, who became Home Affairs Minister. He tries to reconcile his beliefs and customs with those of the country in which they live.

Answer: Ocean Vuong

Ocean Vuong (1988) is a poet, essayist and novelist, who was born in Vietnam, grandson of a Vietnamese woman and an American soldier. On leaving Vietnam, with his mother and grandmother, they spent time in a concentration camp in the Philippines until they could go to the United States. At age of 11, he became the first person in his family to learn to read.

The author received awards for his poetry, published some chapbooks, a collection of poetry and the novel "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous", 2019, his debut novel. It is an epistolary novel, a letter written by a child to a mother who does not know how to read. The novel is based on the author's own life. The main character is a young American nicknamed Little Dog, who came from Vietnam and lives with his grandmother and his mother. They still live with the horrors of the war from which they survived. His mother and grandmother didn't speak English, didn't get good jobs, and couldn't help the child adapt to the new environment, defending him from bullying and discharging their impotence and anger on their child. They live in disparate worlds, trying to find happiness and surviving without abandoning their identity.

Answer: Min Jin Lee

"Pachinko" is the multigenerational epic novel that follows a family living in Korea occupied by the Japanese and then moving to Japan. The novel covers the life of four generations, their dreams, aspirations, disappointments and suffering under discrimination. Even those born in Japan are considered immigrants. Pachinko is a very common type of game in Japan and many pachinko establishments are administered by Koreans, on the fringe of legality. There is a correlation between family life and the game. In each movement made in the game and in life there are chances of success and failure.

Min Jin Lee was born in 1968 in South Korea and at age of 7 she moved with her family to New York. She worked some time as a corporate lawyer and later dedicated herself solely to writing. Min Jin has written for several American and South Korean journals, essays, short stories and two novels. In 2007 she published the novel "Free Food for Millionaires" and in 2017 she published "Pachinko".

Answer: Stefania Auci

"The Florios of Sicily" is a novel describing a powerful family in the period 1799 to 1868, when Italy had undergone significant political turbulence. In 1799, an earthquake destroyed the community of Bagnara Calabria, located in Calabria, Italy, also destroying the house of the Florios. After this, Paolo, the head of the family, decided that they should move to Palermo, Sicily, a place with greater opportunities to expand their maritime business, focused on spices. In fact, the Florios became rich, expanded their business, dominated the trade routes in the region and in doing so, dominated the economic activity of the island. However, they were not accepted by the Sicilian elite, suffered all kinds of prejudice and were hated.

Stefania Auci was born in Sicily in 1974. She writes for literary blogs and online publications. She undertook a deep study on the Florio family in order to write this novel based on them.

Answer: NoViolet Bulawayo

NoViolet Bulawayo is the pen name of the writer Elizabeth Zandile Tshele, who was born in 1981 in Zimbabwe. She studied in her country and completed her college education in the United States. "We Need New Names", released in 2013, her debut novel, was included in the 2013 Man Book Prize Shortlist.

The novel tells Darling's life and her pre-teenage friends living in a slum called Paraíso, in Zimbabwe, where violence is present and children dream of a life of happiness and luxury elsewhere. Darling has the chance to escape from Zimbabwe and goes in search of abundance and happiness in the United States where she has an aunt who lives in Detroit, Michigan. There, the young woman is faced with the problems faced by immigrants, especially Africans: a different culture, a new language, the exploitation by their bosses and relatives, who constantly ask for money, and also the permanent threat of deportation. They ended up stranded in the new country, they couldn't go to visit their family in Zimbabwe. Since they were undocumented, if they left the US, they would not be allowed back.

Answer: Souvankham Thammavongsa

"How To Pronounce Knife", published in 2020, by Souvankham Thammavongsa, is a collection of fourteen short stories about the life of Laotian families and their struggle to reconcile the beliefs and the customs of their country of origin with their new country. The stories are at the same time funny and heartbreaking. Among these stories are the problems of children who have to attend schools and who cannot count on the support of their parents who are often non speakers of the local language. The book describes the dissatisfaction of adults with jobs inferior to their professional qualifications, the difficulty immigrants have in understanding hierarchies in companies, the dilemmas faced by non-working women who are divided between maintaining their customs and adapting to a new environment. In all of the stories, there is hope for a better life, the desire to be loved and understood.

Souvankham Thammavongsa was born in Thailand in 1978, in the Lao Refugee Camp, and was brought up in Canada where she arrived with her family.

Answer: Bill Bryson

"I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away" is a collection of articles by American writer Bill Bryson (1951). They were written from September 1996 to September 1998, for "Night & Day Magazine", a supplement of the "Mail on Sunday" newspaper, and published as a book in 1998. The author went to England at an early age and returned to the United States 20 years later, in 1995. Married and with four children, he went to live in Hanover, New Hampshire.

The articles show their disconcerting meeting with his country of origin, an attempt to become familiar with this new country, a younger America, improved, with many rules that sometimes he could not understand. Bill Bryson says there are three things you can't do in life. "You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he is ready to see you, and you can't go home again."

Answer: Viola Ardone

"The Children's Train: Novel", 2021, is the third book written by the Italian Viola Ardone, a writer, poet and teacher of Latin and Italian. She was born in Naples in 1974.

"The Children's Train" is based on historical facts that Italy prefers to forget about. After WWII, Calabria, which was an extremely poor region, was plagued by large floods in the years 1951 and 1953. The Italian government and several entities decided to relocate thousands of children from 3 to 12 years of age, with the consent of the parents, to go live temporarily with families or in some institutions in the North of the country, where the economic conditions were better. Despite the trauma of separation, for many children, it was a favorable experience, but for others it was very painful. Many of them had to stay a year, others for many years and some have never returned. Most of these "children" now in their 70s and 80s prefer to keep silent on the subject and can't handle the subject well. The novel by Viola Ardone sheds light on this subject. The main character of the book is the boy Amerigo, who had a very good experience with his northern family but was not able to adapt to his original family on his return.