Caucasia: A Novel
by Danzy Senna
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Read in February, 2008
Birdie Lee and Cole Lee, daughters of a black academic and a white radical, are separated when their mother's involvement in radical politics gains FBI attention: Cole, who looks black, goes off with their father and his new (black) girlfriend to Brazil (their father says he is sick of America), and Birdie, who looks white, is sent off with their mother to pass as white and part-Jewish. The best part of the book covers the girls' childhood and education; subsequent parts, skimming over Birdie's...more
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Read in November, 2006
recommended to T.J. by:
Kris Kangrecommends it for: multiracial folk, would-be activists, human interest story readers
The first time I read this book was on a a rainy bus ride in the San Francisco bay area, and I surprised myself by finding myself crying, for it in many ways spoke of my own multiracial experience, albeit in highly fictionalized form.
Danzy Senna's first novel, Caucasia, is a story of traumatic dislocation, disorientation, and confused ethnic identity, set in 1970s and 80s Boston and intermittently in other places. It's the story of Birdie ...more
Danzy Senna's first novel, Caucasia, is a story of traumatic dislocation, disorientation, and confused ethnic identity, set in 1970s and 80s Boston and intermittently in other places. It's the story of Birdie ...more
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Read in November, 2007
Caucasia is the story of Birdie Lee, the daughter of a white mother and a black father. Birdie has an older sister, Cole, who looks like how you would expect a child of her racial mix to look - black. Birdie, on the other hand, looks white. The contrast between the two causes constant confusion, and the never-ending assumption that Birdie must be adopted. The story is told from Birdie's perspective. She is quite young when the book begins and while she seems to understand racial politics to some...more
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Read in February, 2008
recommended to Julie by:
Jenny, Powell's Daily Dose
When we first meet Birdie Lee, she is an 8-year-old whose whole world is her family: her beloved older sister Cole, her fiery and mercurial mother who has turned her back on her upper-class upbringing to do some unspecified underground activities, and her father, a professor at Boston U who writes about race. The fact that her mother is white and her father is black, and the setting is Boston in the 1970s, is critical to the story: although Birdie is sheltered, she is growing up in the middle...more
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Read in August, 2007
I loved this book. It covers an interesting territory of ideas like class, race, the idea of 'passing' - both forced and unforced, conformity, and connection among other interesting topics. It's basically a coming-of-age novel that touches on these political and social themes through the eyes of a bi-racial girl without being annoyingly preachy/self-righteous, dry, or boring. I think the author writes about these issues very gracefully and yet is always very real. There's a sense that the main c...more
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Read in March, 2008
This is the story of two biracial sisters trying to find each other and their identities after being separated. Birdie, the narrator, has lighter skin, resembles their white mother, and can pass for white. Her sister, Cole, has darker skin and resembles their black father. Their parents separate them and move to different continents to try to escape the violence and racism in Boston. Birdie spends the rest of the novel trying to find Cole and figure out who she is and how the color of her sk...more
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Read in December, 2007
recommends it for:
anyone
A great and complicated book to end the year 2007 with. This is the story of Birdie Lee, the daughter of a white mother and a black father, who as the novel begins is growing up in Boston in the 70's with her sister, Cole. As her parents' marriage unravels, Birdie becomes more and more aware of race issues because she looks "white" while her sister looks "black." Birdie's parents split up but an even more traumatic separation takes place when Birdie's father goes to Brazil...more
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It's the early 1970s. Cole is the big sister of the family. Birdie is the younger sister. When the girls are out with their father, people look uncomfortably at Birdie. Birdie and Cole's father is black, and their mother is white. Cole takes after her father ... but Birdie doesn't. In 1970s America, this is a big problem. Eventually, "black-power" politics split the family up, and Birdie is taken into hiding with her mother and passed off as a Jewish girl. Birdie simply wants to find h...more
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Read in March, 2008
An interesting take on the idea of passing, filtered through the lens of a daughter of a black father and white mother, separated just before her teenage years from her father and darker-skinned sister. Set in the 1970s, Caucasia takes up issues of skin color, identity politics, black nationalism and adolescence, as well as the idea of sexual passing. Senna's protagonist navigates her sense of self as mediated through the perceptions of others, including the manipulations of her mother and the r...more
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From this book came the passage that inspired the amazing Seattle hip hop duo, Canary Sing:
"The mulatto in America functions as a canary in a coal mine. Canaries were used by coal miners to gauge how poisonous the air underground was. They would bring a canary in with them, and if it grew sick and died they knew the air was bad and eventually everyone would be poisoned by the fumes. Likewise, mulattos have historically been the gauge of how poisonous American race relations were. The fa...more
"The mulatto in America functions as a canary in a coal mine. Canaries were used by coal miners to gauge how poisonous the air underground was. They would bring a canary in with them, and if it grew sick and died they knew the air was bad and eventually everyone would be poisoned by the fumes. Likewise, mulattos have historically been the gauge of how poisonous American race relations were. The fa...more
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what i liked about senna's book was the honesty with which she spoke about the experiences of being bi-racial (half-white, half-black specifically) in 1970s america. i connected with the book as a coming of age story about a girl who struggles to own an identity that feels genuine to her person. birdie lee's relationships with her parents remind me of my own in the ways in which divorce and differences in race, class and gender make birdie and her sister perhaps feel like they can never be truly...more
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Read in November, 2007
Gorgeous "coming of age" novel about a young girl in Boston in the late 70's who has to go underground with her revolutionary mother and "pass" as white. First novel in a long time that I haven't been able to put down. Lyrical depictions of Birdie's struggle with identity interspersed with sharp insights about race and class.
"Mothers with baby carriages and grocery bags tried to get in from the rain. Looking at them, I remembered how when I was little, I used to t...more
"Mothers with baby carriages and grocery bags tried to get in from the rain. Looking at them, I remembered how when I was little, I used to t...more
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recommends it for:
anyone interested in women's fiction, growing up in 70's/80's
Caucasia tells the story of two sisters born during the civil rights movement in 1970s Boston. Their father is black; their mother white; Cole has dark skin and Birdy does not. The parents are both activist intellectuals whose marriage is based more on ideology than true compatibility.
When the marriage breaks up, the sisters are split up, and Birdy is told by her mother that she must pass as white. This results in her estrangement from her sister (who goes with their father), and from her...more
When the marriage breaks up, the sisters are split up, and Birdy is told by her mother that she must pass as white. This results in her estrangement from her sister (who goes with their father), and from her...more
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Read in June, 2007
What I liked best about this book was the way in which it handled the subject of conformity: all the ways in which we try to fit in as well as the ways in which we rebel from those groups we find ourselves "assigned to" by outside forces. Senna did a great job of delineating the complexities involved in racial identity, and how even in the same family conflicts can occur. Several books, both fiction and nonfiction, have addressed the issue of voluntary and involuntary "passing&quo...more
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Read in September, 2002
recommends it for:
everyone
Caucasia is one of my all-time favorite books. It is a quick read that is difficult to put down. The author addresses the issue of growing up in a multi-ethnic family in the 1960's through the eyes of a young girl, Birdie. Birdie's family must split and because she has fair skin, she follows her mother in a life on the run, while her sister and father leave for Brazil. Birdie and her mother adopt new identities and begin an unsettled and obscure life. Birdie is then forced to pass as white, d...more
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Read in June, 2007
How do we deal with race when we are really multiracial, after all, weren't white slave owners perpetrating their slaves since they began plundering this land? Senna paints a bi-racial account of life during the Civil Rights movement all the while asking why we are so enveloped in the idea of race when we have always been multiracial in this country. How do we deal with a half Black/ half white child who looks white? What about the one who looks Black? What does it mean to pass as white when ...more
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Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
Anyone
Growing up in a racially tense decade of the '70s is rough when you're bi-racial. The difficulty of the author growing up on the fence is captivating. With her writing style that is good to read with its flow and form of plotline, the book kept you reading until the end.
Not my favorite book I must honestly say, because of the strong resemblence between the tentativeness of the relationship between mother and daughter; it was very real and down to earth, which is okay, no problem with that, jus...more
Not my favorite book I must honestly say, because of the strong resemblence between the tentativeness of the relationship between mother and daughter; it was very real and down to earth, which is okay, no problem with that, jus...more
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Read in March, 2006
recommends it for:
Everyone
I really did love this book. I thought it delved into the problematics of "choosing" and whether anyone should have to. As someone who is bi-cultural but with two Black parents, I often wonder why we force people with parents of different ethnicities or nationalities to choose. We ask them: what are you? where are you from? And, for what? What does it do to them, to us, to ask them to deny a part of themselves? This book really makes you think about that.
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
young and/or white people
This is a pretty believable story of a biracial girl and her white once-radical, mostly neurotic mom. The dad, once also active in black power circles, has disappeared with the other daughter. There is a lot of longing, sadness, and craziness in the compelling, easy-to-read narrative. The child who stayed with the mom is lighter skinned than her darker skinned sister and this skin quality determines the fates of everybody.
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Read in January, 1997
This book was recommended to me by a friend ten years ago. The topics the book deals with were interesting to me then and still are now. It's about Boston in the 1970's, one girl's identity crisis as a biracial girl passing for white, her separation from her sister and dad and their eventual reunion in Berkeley. Danzy Senna's writing is personal and she weaves her own experiences into Birdie's life. Highly recommend!
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