“There’s that feeling, like we're stuck in this endless loop of Black death and outrage. In the years since, her essay occasionally recirculates alongside new instances of police brutality, which frustrates Bennett, though she appreciates the impact the essay has had on its readers.

In 2014, as the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, Bennett wrote an essay called “I Don’t Know What to Do With Good White People.” In it, she tells a story about the difficulty of being Black in the presence of white people who claim they want to help, but persist in racist behavior.

A month ago the idea of being in a crowd would be so unthinkable. “Particularly coming off this extreme period of isolation that a lot of us have been experiencing. People watching the protest walk by, people supporting and clapping,” Bennett said this week, a few days after the release of her new novel, The Vanishing Half. “It was cool to see people hanging out their windows and yelling out support, cars honking, and people watching everything. From the Brooklyn apartment where she has weathered the pandemic, she has also watched a protest movement bloom, and has even joined the marchers. When the novelist Brit Bennett moved to New York City last year to teach writing classes, she didn’t anticipate that she would eventually get a front-row seat to the type of social change she has contemplated in her writing.

Brit bennett the vanishing half