Caucasia by Danzy Senna

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Black Like Me

"Maybe I had actually become Jesse, and it was this girl, this Birdie Lee who...was the lie....I wondered if whiteness were contagious. If it were, then surely I had caught it....[it] affected the way I walked, talked, dressed, danced, and...the way I looked at the world and at other people."
—Birdie Lee in Caucasia

In the tradition of Nella Larsen's Passing, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and James McBride's The Color of Water, Danzy Senna's first novel, Caucasia, explores the complexity of racial discord in America. While Ellison wrote about being paradoxically marked yet "invisible" as a black American man, and Larsen grappled with issues of race, gender, and sexuality during the Harlem Renaissance, Caucasia describes the experience of the invisible sister who confronts biracial identity in post-civil rights movement America.

Birdie Lee, the protagonist of Caucasia, grows up in 1970s Boston with her older sister, Cole, her radical WASP mother, Sandy, and her intellectual African American father, Deck. Sandy was raised in nearby Cambridge -- the daughter of a Harvard professor and a socialite mother whose lineage extended back to Cotton Mather -- while Deck's more amorphous history originated in the depths of the Louisiana bayou. Although Sandy's practice of housing political exiles in many ways complements Deck's revolutionary theories about race, their explosive and intense relationship is a source of instability and concern for both Birdie Lee and Cole. Eventually, the marriage collapses, and Deck finds a new romantic interest, Carmen, a black woman who ignores Birdie Lee and favors Cole.

Birdie Lee's existence, her core, heart, and essence, revolves around Cole. As Birdie Lee recalls, "Before I ever saw myself, I saw my sister. When I was still too small for mirrors, I saw her as the reflection that proved my own existence." However, while Birdie Lee is phenotypically Caucasoid and can "pass" (as white), with her cinnamon skin and curling hair Cole clearly looks black. Birdie Lee instinctively understands that this is why

"Cole was my father's special one....his prodigy -- his young, gifted, and black.... Her existence comforted him. She was the proof that his blackness hadn't been completely blanched...proof that he had indeed survived the integrationist shuffle...that his body still held the power to leave its mark."

One day, while attending Nkrumah, the Black Power school whose motto is Black is beautiful, Birdie Lee's parents realize that their commitment to hiding subversive radicals in their basement is making them prime targets for "the pigs, the Feds, the motherfuckers in the big house." Eventually, Cole and Deck emigrate to Brazil (with Carmen), while Birdie Lee and Sandy disappear into the vastness of America. The key is that while the FBI would be searching for a white woman with a black child, Birdie Lee's ability to pass will enable them to live a chameleonlike and protected existence.

Birdie Lee and Sandy are thus transformed into Jesse and Sheila Goldman; Sandy reasons that a Jewish identity is the closest Birdie Lee will get to being black while passing as white. "Tragic history, kinky hair, good politics," she explained, "It's all there." For four years Sandy and Birdie Lee are on the lam between communes and motels, eventually settling in New Hampshire, where Birdie Lee, now an adolescent, becomes a typical teen -- experimenting with makeup, wearing skintight jeans, and flirting with boys. Sandy settles into life in the parochial, nearly all-white town and has a steady boyfriend. Yet for Birdie Lee, the continuing lie of their existence and identities becomes increasingly painful and complex, and the absence of her father and sister is absolutely intolerable.

Finally, in March 1982, a full six years after leaving Boston, Birdie Lee returns to Massachusetts, determined to find her father and sister. Although initially content to live as "a spy in enemy territory" Birdie realizes she has metamorphosed into someone she doesn't like, "somebody who had no voice or color or conviction."

Eventually, Birdie Lee locates both her father and sister, who are living separately in Berkeley, and she is heartbroken that her father hadn't searched for her merely because "it was too much of a time commitment.... [He] cared more for books and theories than he did for flesh and blood." However, finding her long-lost other half, Cole, brings Birdie Lee's physically, emotionally, and spiritually arduous journey to a joyous conclusion.

Perhaps the most trenchant observation in Caucasia comes toward the end, when Deck, still "mad and brilliant," pontifically proclaims his newly evolved understanding of race to Birdie Lee:

"...[T]here's no such thing as passing. We're all just pretending. Race is a complete illusion, make-believe. It's a costume. We all wear one. You just switched yours at some point. That's just the absurdity of the whole race game."

While Birdie Lee intellectually agrees with her father's thesis, conferring with her sister provides the crucial epiphany: In Cole's words, "He's right, you know. About it all being constructed. But...that doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

The questions of biraciality in Caucasia, inspired by Senna's own life, account for the poignancy, realistic complexity, and nuance intrinsic to the novel. Pitch-perfect period details and a superbly empathic protagonist -- upon whose body racial dissonance is literally played out -- form the backdrop to this evocative story. Without a doubt, Caucasia is one of the most sophisticated and compelling novels about race and identity to emerge in years.

—Gayatri Patnaik

From the Publisher

"Maybe I had actually become Jesse, and it was this girl, this Birdie Lee who...was the lie....I wondered if whiteness were contagious. If it were, then surely I had caught it....[it] affected the way I walked, talked, dressed, danced, and...the way I looked at the world and at other people." --Birdie Lee in Caucasia

In the tradition of Nella Larsen's Passing, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and James McBride's The Color of Water, Danzy Senna's first novel, Caucasia, explores the complexity of racial discord in America. While Ellison wrote about being paradoxically marked yet "invisible" as a black American man, and Larsen grappled with issues of race, gender, and sexuality during the Harlem Renaissance, Caucasia describes the experience of the invisible sister who confronts biracial identity in post-civil rights movement America.

Birdie Lee, the protagonist of Caucasia, grows up in 1970s Boston with her older sister, Cole, her radical WASP mother, Sandy, and her intellectual African American father, Deck. Sandy was raised in nearby Cambridge -- the daughter of a Harvard professor and a socialite mother whose lineage extended back to Cotton Mather -- while Deck's more amorphous history originated in the depths of the Louisiana bayou. Although Sandy's practice of housing political exiles in many ways complements Deck's revolutionary theories about race, their explosive and intense relationship is a source of instability and concern for both Birdie Lee and Cole. Eventually, the marriage collapses, and Deck finds a new romantic interest, Carmen, a black woman who ignores Birdie Lee and favors role.

Birdie Lee's existence, her core, heart, and essence, revolves around Cole. As Birdie Lee recalls:

"Before I ever saw myself, I saw my sister. When I was still too small for mirrors, I saw her as the reflection that proved my own existence."

However, while Birdie Lee is phenotypically Caucasoid and can "pass" (as white), with her cinnamon skin and curling hair Cole clearly looks black. Birdie Lee instinctively understands that this is why:

"Cole was my father's special one....his prodigy -- his young, gifted, and black.... Her existence comforted him. She was the proof that his blackness hadn't been completely blanched...proof that he had indeed survived the integrationist shuffle...that his body still held the power to leave its mark."

One day, while attending Nkrumah, the Black Power school whose motto is Black is beautiful, Birdie Lee's parents realize that their commitment to hiding subversive radicals in their basement is making them prime targets for "the pigs, the Feds, the motherfuckers in the big house." Eventually, Cole and Deck emigrate to Brazil (with Carmen), while Birdie Lee and Sandy disappear into the vastness of America. The key is that while the FBI would be searching for a white woman with a black child, Birdie Lee's ability to pass will enable them to live a chameleonlike and protected existence.

Birdie Lee and Sandy are thus transformed into Jesse and Sheila Goldman; Sandy reasons that a Jewish identity is the closest Birdie Lee will get to being black while passing as white. "Tragic history, kinky hair, good politics," she explained, "It's all there." For four years Sandy and Birdie Lee are on the lam between communes and motels, eventually settling in New Hampshire, where Birdie Lee, now an adolescent, becomes a typical teen -- experimenting with makeup, wearing skintight jeans, and flirting with boys. Sandy settles into life in the parochial, nearly all-white town and has a steady boyfriend. Yet for Birdie Lee, the continuing lie of their existence and identities becomes increasingly painful and complex, and the absence of her father and sister is absolutely intolerable.

Finally, in March 1982, a full six years after leaving Boston, Birdie Lee returns to Massachusetts, determined to find her father and sister. Although initially content to live as "a spy in enemy territory" Birdie realizes she has metamorphosed into someone she doesn't like, "somebody who had no voice or color or conviction."

Eventually, Birdie Lee locates both her father and sister, who are living separately in Berkeley, and she is heartbroken that her father hadn't searched for her merely because "it was too much of a time commitment.... [He] cared more for books and theories than he did for flesh and blood." However, finding her long-lost other half, Cole, brings Birdie Lee's physically, emotionally, and spiritually arduous journey to a joyous conclusion.

Perhaps the most trenchant observation in Caucasia comes toward the end, when Deck, still "mad and brilliant," pontifically proclaims his newly evolved understanding of race to Birdie Lee:

"...[T]here's no such thing as passing. We're all just pretending. Race is a complete illusion, make-believe. It's a costume. We all wear one. You just switched yours at some point. That's just the absurdity of the whole race game."

While Birdie Lee intellectually agrees with her father's thesis, conferring with her sister provides the crucial epiphany: In Cole's words, "He's right, you know. About it all being constructed. But...that doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

The questions of biraciality in Caucasia, inspired by Senna's own life, account for the poignancy, realistic complexity, and nuance intrinsic to the novel. Pitch-perfect period details and a superbly empathic protagonist -- upon whose body racial dissonance is literally played out -- form the backdrop to this evocative story. Without a doubt, Caucasia is one of the most sophisticated and compelling novels about race and identity to emerge in years.
-- Gayatri Patnai

New York Times

Haunting and deeply intelligent.

People Magazine

...[A]bsorbing, affecting...

The New York Times Book Review - Elizabeth Schmidt

Superbly illustrates the emotional toll that politics and race take on one especially gutsy young girl's development.

Publishers Weekly

Set in 1970s Boston, this impressively assured debut avoids the usual extremes in its depiction of racial tension. As children, Birdie and her sister, Cole, create their own secret language--Elemeno--to ward off the growing tension between their black father and their white mother. Finally, Mom and Dad split up one time too many, and no amount of Al Green records, Chinese noodles and slow dancing can bring them back together. Cole, whose complexion is darker than her sister's, gets caught up in her new, black nationalist Nkrumah School in Roxbury and in her father's new life with a black girlfriend. Birdie, pale enough to be mistaken for white, stays close to Mom, mourning her estrangement from Dad and especially Coleher mirror, protector and secret sharer. After her father and Cole move to Brazil and the feds start to investigate her mother's mysterious political activities, Birdie and her mother go underground, posing as the wife and daughter of sympathetic professor David Goldman. Senna's observations about the racial divide in America are often fierce but always complex and humane. If the story has didactic overtones, Senna's shaping of '70s detail and convincing development of her appealing protagonists more than justify its message.

Library Journal

Senna's first novel explores life in the middle of America's racial chasm through the eyes of a biracial girl who must struggle for acceptance from blacks and whites alike. Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a white mother and an African American father whose marriage is disintegrating. When their activist mother must flee from the police, the girls are split between their parents: Cole goes with her father because she looks black, Birdie with her mother because she could pass for white. Living in a small town and forced to keep her family, her past, and her race a secret, Birdie spies upon racism in all its forms, from the overt comments of the town locals to the hypocrisy of the wealthy liberals. Senna combines a powerful coming-of-age tale with a young girl's search for identity and family amid a sea of racial stereotypes and cultural ideas of beauty. -- Ellen Flexman, Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library

Library Journal

Senna's first novel explores life in the middle of America's racial chasm through the eyes of a biracial girl who must struggle for acceptance from blacks and whites alike. Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a white mother and an African American father whose marriage is disintegrating. When their activist mother must flee from the police, the girls are split between their parents: Cole goes with her father because she looks black, Birdie with her mother because she could pass for white. Living in a small town and forced to keep her family, her past, and her race a secret, Birdie spies upon racism in all its forms, from the overt comments of the town locals to the hypocrisy of the wealthy liberals. Senna combines a powerful coming-of-age tale with a young girl's search for identity and family amid a sea of racial stereotypes and cultural ideas of beauty. -- Ellen Flexman, Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library

School Library Journal

The time is the 1970s, the place is Boston, and the story is of a biracial marriage and the two little girls born of it. Cole, the first child, preferred by both parents, is beautifully black like her father. Birdie, the narrator, is light enough to pass as white. The wife is a "bleeding heart liberal" who has involved herself in civil rights causes against the wishes of her intellectual husband. Finally, the marriage ruptures. A general breakdown ensues when a gun-running political activity precipitates the need for the family to disappear. Cole is taken off to Brazil with her father to begin a new life in a black environment more open to people of color. Birdie is caught up in a series of wrenching deprivals when her mother insists on the need to go underground. There is a change of location, name, appearance, and in Birdie's case, a change of race; she is to pass as white. Money shortages, a complete lack of stability, the loss of a sister almost a twin, a feeling of displacement, the strains of adjustment, no sense of community or relationship, and the growing suspicion that her mother is psychotic make for disturbing adolescent years. Throughout, Birdie keeps alive her need to connect with her father and sister, and faces the knowledge that the liability of her sister's blackness to her mother and her own unwelcome whiteness to her father has brought the family to this sorry situation. It is her courage, her optimism, and her inherent loyalty that brings about a satisfying reunion for the sisters.-Frances Reiher, Fairfax County Public Library, Virginia

The New York Times

Haunting and deeply intelligent.

The Washington Post

Exquisite....Attention must be paid....The final chapters of the book are as taut and fast-paced as a thriller.

Glamour

Extraordinary....A cross between Mona Simpson's Anywhere But Here and James McBride's The Color of Water; this story of a young girl's struggle -- to find her family, her roots, her identity -- transcends race even while examining it. A compelling look at being black and being white.

A tender and moving novel about two sisters, daughters of a Black father and a white mother, who are separated by their parents' failed marriage. Birdie, who appears to be white, is the narrator of this story about about being whisked away into a new life, only to reach desperately back into time to find her sister and fully embrace her heritage. The novel raises marevelous questions about identity.

What People Are Saying

Thomas Keneally
A superb new writer...A fresh and robust American voice.

Product Details

• ISBN: 1573227161
  
• ISBN-13: 9781573227162
• Format: Paperback, 432pp
• Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
• Pub. Date: June 2003
• Edition Description: Reprint
• Sales Rank: 45,347
• Age Range: 12 and up

• Reading Group Guide
• Read an Excerpt

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION

Caucasia

Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they have created a private language, yet to the outside world they can't be sisters: Birdie appears to be white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at the Afrocentric school they attend. For Birdie, Cole is the mirror in which she can see her own blackness.

Then their parents' marriage falls apart. Their father's new black girlfriend won't even look at Birdie, while their mother gives her life over to the Movement: at night the sisters watch mysterious men arrive with bundles shaped like rifles.

One night Birdie watches her father and his girlfriend drive away with Cole-they have gone to Brazil, she will later learn, where her father hopes for a racial equality he will never find in the States. The next morning-in the belief that the Feds are after them-Birdie and her mother leave everything behind: their house and possessions, their friends, and-most disturbing of all-their identity. Passing as the daughter and wife of a deceased Jewish professor, Birdie and her mother finally make their home in New Hampshire. Desperate to find Cole, yet afraid of betraying her mother and herself to some unknown danger, Birdie must learn to navigate the white world-so that when she sets off in search of her sister, she is ready for what she will find.

ABOUT DANZY SENNA

The daughter of a black father and a white mother, both writers and activists in the Civil Rights Movement, Danzy Senna grew up in Boston and attended Stanford University. She holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, where she received several creative writing awards. She lives in New York City.

PRAISE

"Lucid and magnificent." —James McBride, author of The Color of Water

"Senna's remarkable first novel [will] cling to your memory. There's Birdie, who takes after her mother's white, New England side of the family—light skin, straight hair. There's her big sister, Cole, who takes after her father, a radical black intellectual. It's the early seventies, and black-power politics divide their parents, who divide the sisters; Cole disappears with their father, and Birdie goes underground with their mother...Senna tells this coming-of-age tale with impressive beauty and power." —Newsweek

"[An] absorbing debut novel...Senna superbly illustrates the emotional toll that politics and race take on one especially gutsy young girl's development as she makes her way through the parallel limbos between black and white and between girl and young woman...Senna gives new meaning to the twin universal desires for a lost childhood and a new adult self by recounting Birdie's struggle to become someone when she can look and act like anyone." —New York Times Book Review

"Brilliant...a finely nuanced story that explores the matter of race through the eyes and heart of another white black girl." —Ms.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Caucasia begins with Birdie's recollection: "A long time ago I disappeared. One day I was here, the next I was gone." Why does Birdie come to think of herself as having "disappeared" when living as Jesse Goldman? Is her ability to disappear a blessing or a curse? Is Birdie "passing" when she calls herself black, or when she calls herself white? When is she not passing?

2. Cole and Birdie speak Elemeno, a language named after their favorite letters in the alphabet, "with no verb tenses, no pronouns, just words floating outside time and space, without owner or direction" (p. 6). How does Elemeno reflect the sisters' positions in their family and in the world? Why does Elemeno continue to be so important to Birdie throughout the novel?

3. In what ways is the tension between Sandy and Cole typical of that between any mother and daughter, and in what ways is it specific to an interracial family? Do you agree with Cole's statement: "Mum doesn't know anything about raising a black child" (p. 44)? Does Sandy treat her two daughters differently based on their appearances?

4. Why do you think Deck treats Birdie with a "cheerful disinterest-never hostility or ill will, but with a kind of impatient amusement" (p. 47)? Do you think he loves Birdie? How do Birdie and Cole respond differently to Deck's teachings on race? Who internalizes his vision of America more? By the end of the novel, have Cole and Birdie embraced or rejected their parents' philosophies about the world? Which sister seems to have become more like Deck, and which more like Sandy?

5. Officially, Birdie has no name. Her birth certificate "still reads 'Baby Lee,' like the gravestone of some stillborn child" (p. 17). Her sister's name, meanwhile, was originally Colette after the French novelist, but was later shortened to Cole. Discuss the significance of the sisters' names.

6. Sandy and Deck are initially drawn together by a quote by the French existentialist writer, Camus, who wrote: "Do you drink coffee at night?" What does this initial encounter tell you about their compatibility, or incompatibility? Why does their relationship eventually sour? Do you believe they were torn apart because of external pressures, or internal ones? Do you think they would have stayed together had they lived in a less racially divided city or in another country altogether? By the end of the novel, does Birdie believe that her parents really loved each other? Do you believe that they did?

7. Birdie refers to the time she spends on the run with Sandy, while "the lie of our false identities seemed irrelevant" (p. 116), as "dreamlike." Despite a sense of loneliness, Birdie says she felt "comfort in that state of incompletion" (p. 116). Do you feel that this experience weighed more positively or negatively in Birdie's development? By the end of the novel, has she found "completion"-or will she continue to live in this state of incompletion?

8. How did Sandy and Birdie's stay at Aurora affect Birdie's emerging sexual identity? How do her sexual experiences with Alexis compare to her later sexual experiences with Nicholas in New Hampshire? Does Birdie's emerging sexuality in any way parallel her search for racial identity?

9. Redbone lurks in the background of the novel as a sinister figure. Why does he initially take such an interest in Birdie? Why does he take her photograph in the playground? Do you believe he is in part responsible for the troubles that befall the family? Ultimately, who or what do you feel is to blame for Cole and Birdie's separation?

10. Birdie often seeks her reflection in other women's faces. What parts of herself does she see mirrored in Cole? Sandy? Maria? Samantha? Dot? Penelope? Mona? Others? What are the potential advantages and disadvantages to being a chameleon?

11. Birdie holds on to a fantasy of helping Deck's research by spying on white people while "passing." How does she fail or succeed in her study? What does she find out? Does she become Jesse Goldman, or is she able to remain Birdie in disguise? Are her fantasies about Deck shattered or fulfilled when she encounters him at the novel's conclusion?

12. At some point in New Hampshire, Birdie starts to add items to her box of "negrobilia." Discuss the significance of the various "artifacts" Birdie keeps in her box. Do they succeed in helping her remember Cole and Deck?

13. In the woods one night in New Hampshire, Samantha says to Birdie: " 'I'm black. Like you' " (p. 242). Do you think Samantha has been aware of Birdie's racial heritage all along, or is Birdie mishearing her? What or who gives Birdie the courage to finally leave New Hampshire?

14. Birdie sees her mother as "a long-lost daughter of Mayflower histories, forever in motion, running from or toward an utterable hideaway" (p. 286). In your opinion, is Sandy more "a hero, a madwoman, or a fool" (p. 332)? What motivated her to take up a life of political activism? What has she sacrificed in the process?

15. Do you agree with Deck that race is "a complete illusion... a costume" (p. 334)? Does Birdie and Cole's experience prove that racial identity is simply a costume, or something deeper?

16. In the novel's conclusion, Birdie says to her sister: " 'They say you don't have to choose. But... there are consequences if you don't.'" Cole replies: " 'Yeah, and there are consequences if you do.'" What are the consequences of choosing and not choosing? Have Birdie and Cole chosen one part of their racial heritage over the other by the novel's conclusion?

17. Birdie writes, "While there seemed to be remnants of my mother's family everywhere-history books, PBS specials, plaques in Harvard Square-my father's family was a mystery. It was as if my father and Dot had arisen out of thin air." Does her mother's white family's written history shape her identity more than her black imagined one? How does knowing or not knowing one's history contribute to one's sense of identity? Does what we learn about ourselves through oral or written histories give us a different understanding of ourselves?

18. Do you agree with Deck's theory about mulattos in America functioning as canaries in the coal mine? Is Birdie a canary in the coal mine? What do you imagine her fate will be?

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they have created a private language, yet to the outside world they can't be sisters: Birdie appears to be white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at the Afrocentric school they attend. For Birdie, Cole is the mirror in which she can see her own blackness.

ABOUT DANZY SENNA

The daughter of a black father and a white mother, both writers and activists in the Civil Rights Movement, Danzy Senna grew up in Boston and attended Stanford University. She holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, where she received several creative writing awards. She lives in New York City.

Praise

"Lucid and magnificent." —James McBride, author of The Color of Water

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Caucasia begins with Birdie's recollection: "A long time ago I disappeared. One day I was here, the next I was gone." Why does Birdie come to think of herself as having "disappeared" when living as Jesse Goldman? Is her ability to disappear a blessing or a curse? Is Birdie "passing" when she calls herself black, or when she calls herself white? When is she not passing?