Truth Is Still Stranger Than Fiction

By Andrea L. T. Peterson

In this truly fascinating fictionalized account of the life and legacy of Belle Da Costa Greene, personal librarian to J.P. Morgan, authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray offer a portrait of an amazing young Black woman forced by the social and political climate of the Gilded Age to hide her true identity and live her life as a white woman to help support her family and find the life she believed was rightfully hers.

Can you be fully yourself, fully authentic when forced to live a life that is a lie? Born Belle Marion Greener, the woman who came to be known as Belle da Costa Greene, one of the most prominent librarians in American history, became such a familiar face in New York and Europe’s cultural world that she ultimately was able to leave behind a legacy the breadth of which is unmatched. Her early introduction to the all-male, all-white Princeton University brought her to the edges of an exclusive white, male, and wealthy world. Her fascination with the renown financier J. Pierpont Morgan and her appreciation of the cultural icons of her time and before, her skills as a keen negotiator, and her social skills which allowed her to navigate New York’s Gilded Age enabled her to far exceed any expectations of her limited beginnings.

The daughter of the first Black graduate of Harvard University— prominent educator, diplomat, and racial justice advocate— Richard T. Greener and Genevieve Ida Fleet Greener, grew up in a predominantly Black community in Washington, D.C. Her ancestors had been slaves. Upon their emancipation they turned back and purchased the freedom of their relatives. This is the familial heritage of Belle Da Costa Greene.

But Belle managed to side-step the truth of her heritage, race, and her upbringing with all of the attending limitations in the racist white world of the early 1900s to impress a nephew of J.P. Morgan who recommended her to his uncle, “J.P.,” who employed her to curate his library.

Morgan senior’s regard for Belle and his appreciation for her knowledge and her success in New York’s high society opened doors for Belle that clearly had to be beyond her wildest dreams. She became his private librarian, with her own assistant. She managed, documented, and built his collection of rare books, manuscripts, and documents. But for the acquisition of countless, priceless (many oneof-a-kind) items would never have found their way to Morgan and his Library would likely never have reached the level of acclaim and high regard that has endured for nearly a century. Ultimately, she worked with Morgan Sr.’s son to establish his father’s library as a public institution accessible and open to the general public.

Hers is the story of a gifted, talented woman who looked beyond the limitations placed on her by the racial and cultural circumstances of her birth. I cannot recommend this historical novel, The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murphy, highly enough. Perhaps you, too, will be motivated to look more deeply into the life of Belle Da Costa Greene, life in New York in the 1920s or J.P Morgan’s distinctive, unequaled library.

In the book “The Vanishing Half” author Brit Bennett—through (historical) fiction—depicts the different lives of identical sisters Desiree and Stella. Though inseparable as children, at 16 they flee the small, southern black town where they were born for lives so diametrically opposite that their identical twinhood is belied.

One sister eventually settles back in the community of her childhood with her daughter. The other has crossed the continent and is passing as white with her white husband and passing child (neither of whom know her truth). It is not until the lives of the sisters’ their daughters, probably destined to intersect, collide that the sisters have a chance to restore their relationship.

The book is about love and relationships—primarily the divergent lives of two identical beings who struggle with the unique relationship that is theirs—but so much more. The relationship that left me holding my breath was not so much how the twins would work out their own relationship, but the potential for personal disaster when Stella, living her pure white privileged life in 1950’s California befriends her new neighbors, a young black couple she feels is being treated unfairly.

You know she realizes that getting too close means risking the revelation of her secret, but her empathy cannot allow her to turn her back on them. Why would the fate of a young Black family matter to Stella? How can she entertain thoughts of socializing with the family? Most secrets ultimately come out. Can Stella be true to herself while simultaneously keeping her secret safe?

But how do you turn your back on everything you were raised to hold close? How can you abandon traditions and relationships that gave you life and sustained your life? How do those choices, those hard decisions, get made and how do they impact one’s authenticity? Is it always giving up the grass on your side for what appears to be greener grass on the other?

These two books are a drop in the bucket full of stories, both fiction and non, that opens a window into the lives of those whose hopes and aspirations force them to make decisions like these, and then live with them.