The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
"The exhaustion, the desperation, the sheer selfishness of survival"
I enjoyed this book. A story about colored racial identity, in which benign checkboxes on personal info charts will cause society to open/ close doors to people's life.
I am grateful for living in a primarily Asian and small community, because when I was growing up, I did not experience biases due to my race. Simply because there was only "one race" when everyone looks at you. I was taught that achieving marks in life were merely based on personal effort and hardwork. But maybe what this meant was that I was part of the "better" race. As such, I did not have these experiences.
Because different cultures have different ways to value you. In Asia, physical characteristics (ex. facial/ skin color) matter as much as National/ Regional identity (aka "where you're from"). Like a race divider, in Chn, we could easily simulate a similar process of events if you were to check a form that says you came from HK.
