Danzy Senna’s First Novel, Caucasia

Danzy Senna’s First Novel, Caucasia

The novel Caucasia is an impressive piece written by Danzy Senna that maps out the journey of a biracial girl throughout the 1970s and 1980s. However, I found Danzy Senna’s Caucasia to be extremely powerful. It dealt with essential topics such as social justice and racial Identity but did so in a way that was easy to understand and follow. Senna created characters that I, as the reader, was able to sympathize with, which helped in getting her themes across. More specifically, our narrator birdie and her struggle with not fitting into either of the races that she is told that she belongs to stuck out to me while reading this novel.

Before this passage, Birdie is describing what it is like to be on the run with her mother, moving from place to place, and not knowing what is coming next:

“In those years, I felt myself to be incomplete– a gray blur, a body in motion, forever galloping toward completion–half a girl, half-caste, half-mast, and half-baked, not quite ready for consumption. And for me, there was comfort in that state of incompletion, a sense that as long as we kept moving, we could go back to what we had left behind” (Senna 137).

Within this passage, Senna is using sharp images of motion and fluidity. In the first sentence, we have words such as blur, movement, and galloping. This represents not only the nomadic lifestyle that Birdie and her family have taken on but also the fluidity of her racial Identity that she has been battling with throughout the novel. The phrase “gray blur” sticks out in this passage because it captures the racial ambiguity that Birdie is dealing with. She is this mixture of her black father and white mother but still does not feel as though she fits into either race. The reader can also see a repetition of the word “half.” Senna is pushing this idea of being caught in the middle. Nothing in Birdie’s life is concrete at the moment. She is stuck in the middle of races, in the middle of her family, and in the middle of being on the run and having a place to stay. The phrase, “not quite ready for consumption” is also one that is important to the passage. It is implying that her racial ambiguity is somehow a negative thing, which is how she feels when people at school treat her differently or when Carmen very obviously favors Cole over Birdie. She wishes she could go back to “what [she] had left behind” with her family, not in a place of division and feeling is though she had a place where she belonged. She wishes she could go back to when it was just her and her sister in the attic in their world where they didn’t seem different, and looking at Cole was just like looking in a mirror rather than everyone insisting on pointing out their differences. The central concept that is being portrayed in this passage is the theme of racial and ethnic Identity. Throughout the novel, almost everything in Birdie’s life is characterized into black or white, including, schools, neighborhoods, towns, and people around her. There is this idea that you absolutely must fit into one of those categories, but Birdie is the prime example that you can be in the middle. Her longing to express her black Identity despite appearing to be white is something that she struggles with through the entirety of the novel.

This girl, Birdie, takes us through her experiences of being the lighter-toned sister in her family. She witnesses how so many people treat her and her sister, Cole, differently from each other just because of the tint of their skin. The fact that people treated her differently, always confused her because she always identified herself as equal or the same as her sister. She would try to act the same, wear close to the same things as Cole, and do anything in her power to become accepted by others or to “fit in,” just like Cole did. Without Cole stepping up for her and telling them Birdie is her sister, she probably would have struggled more than she did.  As you go through the novel, you can disclose that Birdie is trying to identify herself, determine where she belongs, and see what she has to do to make herself known and relevant, especially after she and Cole split. Cole was her life, and without her, she felt distant. She felt like the girl she was trying to become wasn’t real, and Cole was the proof; Cole was the key to who Birdie was. In all, Birdie is trying to figure out her true Identity and how she can fit in as her true self instead of faking her way of being something she is not.

When Birdie is a small child around four years old, she always looked at herself as if she was exactly like Cole. There was a time in the book where she even compared herself to Cole. When Birdie and Cole would get ready in the morning, she couldn’t see herself in the mirror because she was so short, so all she had was Cole to mirror her. “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 existence. Back then, I was content to see only Cole, three years older than me, and imagine that her face –cinnamon-skinned, curly-haired, serious—was my own… That face was me, and I was that face, and that was how the story went” (5). Only when she got older, she realized how different she and Cole were. But this wasn’t a personality difference; this was more of a racial interpretation difference from others. Since Birdie was so lightly toned in the skin, she was seen by others as white, and this was truly embraced when she went to her first all-black public school, Nkrumah. Everyone there saw Birdie as white until Cole told everyone that she was her sister. From then on, she would try the best to fit in. She would imitate Cole and try to be more like her, and she would say what people want to hear to get their approval. Her doing this became a big part of her trying to find her own Identity, because as the book goes on and she is almost forced to pass as white when the family split, you can see her wanting to get back to the black culture. She was raised around the black culture at the beginning of her life. All the influences from her father, throwing hypotheses and theories at her and her sister, in an attempt to influence and brainwash them, saying stuff like, “…there’s no such thing as passing. We’re all just pretending. The race is a complete illusion, make-believe. It’s a costume. We all wear one. You just switch yours at some point. That’s just the absurdity of the whole race game” (391).

Besides, her mother was involved with everything going on dealing with the race war and nonsense like that, soon making Birdie genuinely believe that the feds want her mother. “My mother stood at the van door, looking up and down the street, wringing her hands, biting her nails, talking with her face close to one of the men’s… We watched until all the bags had been brought in, and our mother had crouched to bolt-lock the basement door…” (Danzy Senna, p. 96). All of these events and experiences of Birdie’s seems to build up inside of her, soon, leaving her with the mentality of finding the answers instead of letting things be the way they are. Birdie realized why her parents said she looked like a little Sicilian. She was aware of the differences between her and Cole. The race was thought of as biological. The size of the brain was the standard to value a human. They believed that English (whites) have a bigger skull; as such, they are more intelligent than others who have a small head. According to Pro-slavery, Physician Samuel George Morton, the English head is the largest and then Germany. At the bottom of the list are Negroes, Chinese, and Indian. This research proved to be untrue, and the biological concept is just artificial thinking. According to Jeffrey Kluger, Halle Berry was not the first black woman to win an Academy Award, and Barack Obama is the 44^th president of United States. This information proves that a human’s ability cannot measure by skull size. Therefore, biology cannot define the racial group of a person (Jeffrey Kluger 10)

In the book Birdie and Cole got forced to split, Cole with her father and Birdie with her mother, because apparently, it was getting “too toxic” to stay in America, says her father, and her mother was in trouble with the law (Danzy Senna, p.121). Birdie did not know why she had to go on the run with her mother, but she did anyway and thought to herself that this would be temporary. She went into hiding with her mother under the alias Jesse Goldman, a Jewish girl. This part of her life was probably the most difficult because of her not being with Cole, and most importantly, her having to pass as white. She would have to try her best to fit in with a new crowd and hide her past life. Although she struggled at times to hide the truth and keep her lie straight, she tended to get the hang of it. Just like at Nkrumah, she had to fit in with those at her new school and say what they wanted to hear. Reading through this part in the novel, you can tell that she sometimes gets furious at what some people say about black people. She does well to hide it, but sometimes it just slips. For example, when Birdie, her mother, Jim (mother’s boyfriend), and Mona (Birdie’s best friend at the time) got lost when trying to get back to New Hampshire from New York, a group of black teenagers standing at the corner of the road threw a rock at the back window of Jim’s car. Jim got into an altercation with a group of males. Still, while that was happening, Mona, who was in the vehicle with Birdie at the time, said something ignorant and insulting about the teenagers that got Birdie mad enough to punch her in the arm (Danzy Senna, p. 263). Her action was a sudden urge that shows how Birdie feels inside. Even though she’s going through with this act of being white, her true self still shows through small random acts. Another example that explains this attraction to the black culture is when they were visiting a museum in New York. Birdie and Mona had asked to leave and wait for her mother and Jim outside. While they were waiting, they spotted a group of older kids gather around a radio playing music she hasn’t heard in a very long time. The flow of the music went through her, and she started dancing like instinct (Danzy Senna, p.261). This brings out another side of Birdie that hasn’t been seen before. She is getting older and more aware of the things that interest her. She might be young, but she is starting to put her priorities in order, and slowly she is finding herself.

Throughout the book, Birdie has been lying, and it seems to become more frequent as one reads through the book. In Birdie’s case, it is hard for a young child to be forced into a lie like this. She had to leave her old life, a life she loved, change her name, identify with another race, and follow the complicated story her mother preaches to her every day. This sudden change can be very stressful. She got split up with her sister and father and not can’t even tell her closes friends that she has the best sister in the world. That stress can cause Birdie just blatantly to lie for no reason at all. One example was when she told a group of kids at the beach that she was an Indian Princess that got forced to live with a random family just to survive (Danzy Senna, p. 184-187). This was the most unnecessary thing I’ve seen anyone do. This was just for attention, and she enjoyed it. Even Jim and her mother catch her in her lie and try to make her apologize and tell the truth. Even that didn’t work because she started to run off and said, looking back at the children, “I told you they were crazy” (Danzy Senna, p. 187).  She’s lied so much in the past; she thought it was okay to lie to anyone else, knowing that they probably won’t see her again. This shows her being manipulative, telling people the thing she knows will get their attention and build off of that. She does this a lot, even with the people she closes to, such as Maria, Mona, Nicholas, Alexis, and her grandmother.

Birdie is strong, yet a confused girl. She usually seems to get people to like her just by saying what they won’t hear, but that was built on her since her, and her mother had to do anything to get what they wanted and to stay safe. Other than that, she seems motivated, independent, and straightforward on what she wants to do. She is incredibly courageous and can take care of herself. She was able to get enough money to get to Boston from New Hampshire, find a safe place to stay, and manipulate her grandmother into giving her more than enough money to go across the country to find her father and sister. All of this without full proof of her father and sister still being in America. Now that is a motivated, courageous, strong, independent, intelligent young lady. In the end, when she was reunited with her sister, it was probably the happiest moment of her life. She hasn’t seen her sister in almost six years, and she was able to find it with a few weeks. Now that’s dedication, something her father didn’t have enough to find her.  Now she can finally continue her real life with Cole as her sister.

The Elemenos: How the Made-Up Language and World Is Constant in Caucasia Throughout Danzy Senna’s, Caucasia, there is an underlying theme of language and foreign lands. From Birdie and Cole’s made-up world of “Elemeno” to real-life places like Boston, California, and Brazil, the characters are constantly in a different location. These places each impact Birdie and Cole’s life. Additionally, whenever the two sisters travel, they are constantly brought back into the world of “Elemeno,” a language that Birdie and Cole made up as children and spoke throughout their youth. The made-up culture of “Elemeno” symbolizes innocence, passing, and perfect society. The first mention of an alien world is when Senna writes about Birdie and Cole’s language called “Elemeno.” The language symbolizes innocence and youth. When they are young, Birdie and Cole do not know much about the world around them, so they create stories revolving around a make-believe people and place. In their imaginations, they can control the “Elemenos” and create their beliefs, the way they act, the way they speak, and everything else about them. This foreign land was also something that blocked out their parents fighting whenever they spoke Elemeno. The magical world of Elemeno was a secret that connected the two girls. Neither of them needed to look, be, or act a certain way to imagine Elemeno; they just needed to believe. Cruz 2 Not only is it a language, but it is also a magical world with people called “the Elemenos” that Cole describes as, “a shifting people, constantly changing form, color, pattern…” (7). To a young Birdie, this world was just a fantastical story that she and Cole made up, but Cole knew it was something more. It was a distraction from their parents’ fighting and place they could go when they no longer wanted to be in their home of Boston. Tru Leverette, an English professor, writes, “[f]or Birdie, the initial desire for invisibility is driven by a need for safety in a hostile world” (115). Cole created the “Elemenos” to keep Birdie from thinking about all of the negative things that happen outside their door. When she mentions that the “Elemenos” is “a shifting people,” she means that they can change how they appear. Cole realized that she and Birdie were different colors before Birdie did because she is the eldest. All Birdie knew is that they were sisters, so in her innocent mind, they were the same. Senna writes, ” constantly changing form, color, pattern…”, meaning they would also be able to blend into their surroundings, which is something Cole and Birdie probably wanted to do anytime their parents would fight. Deck has always thought of Brazil as a magical place where race is not as important as it is in the United States. In Caucasia, Deck shares his utopian vision of Brazil with Cole and his new girlfriend, Carmen, because they are black and understand each other when it comes to the color of their skin. He plans to travel to Brazil with Cole and Carmen, where they “anticipate racial harmony” (Leverette 118). Cole went to the Nkrumah School, where she felt that she belonged completely; this was because she was in the majority. Unfortunately, the real world is different, and she soon discovers that many people in the world do not treat dark-skinned individuals with the respect that they deserve. The three venture to Brazil, hopeful for their new Cruz 3 lives in Brazil. However, as Geneva Cobb Moore, Professor of English and Women and Gender Studies, writes, “as a former South American slave colony, Brazil has its ghostly legacy of slavery” (113). Moore’s point teaches readers that there is discrimination everywhere in the world; there is no escaping stereotypes and prejudice. Brazil may not be the fantastical, utopian, “race-free society” (Moore 113). Deck thought it would be, but instead, has its dark history, just like the United States. As a child, Cole created the “Elemeno” people who lived in their magical world. As she grows up and is separated from Birdie, she learns that they appear different because of the way that they look. As she lives with Deck and Birdie lives with Sandy, they are forced to live their lives in a box that is classified by race, whereas, when the girls lived together, all they had to do was be themselves. Unfortunately, that was when they were children, and now the girls have a different view of the world. This means that they also have opened their eyes to people being different or looking different. As children, it did not matter whether or not someone looked different, but society has taught them that is does. In the “Elemeno,” world, the race did not matter. In an attempt to go back to that innocent mindset, Cole is excited to go to Brazil, only to have her vision crushed when she realizes Brazil is not how she thought it would be. In contrast to Cole, Birdie is moving around with her mother, Sandy, when she believes that the FBI is following her. Throughout the book, readers are never certain as to whether or not the FBI is following her. Regardless, Sandy is frantic and encourages Birdie to pass as white. Birdie changes her name to Jesse, and Sandy becomes Sheila. When this happens, Birdie can feel her Identity slipping away; thus, Senna writes, “…when I stopped being nobody, I would become white- white as my skin, hair, bones allowed. My body would fill in the blanks, tell me who I should become, and I would let it speak for me” (1). She is forced to act a certain way to blend in with her surroundings in each new place she and her mom travel to. Brenda Boudreau, an English Professor, writes, “Birdie begins to disappear behind a white identity she doesn’t understand or want” (60). This relates to the quote, “[m]y body would fill in the blanks, tell me who I should become,” because Birdie allowed her looks to do the work. She would not tell anyone she was half black and would pass as an all-white girl. She does not want to do this because she recognizes the black part of her, although she realizes that she doesn’t look the part.

However, she does what her mother asks and pretends to be white like her. When Birdie states, “I would let it speak for me,” she means that because she looks white, anyone who sees her will assume she is white based on her skin color. This relates to the “Elemenos” and “their ability to disappear into any surrounding” (Senna 7). When she went to school in Boston, she wanted to pass as black and even tried to do her hair in braids like the girls at school. However, while living with her mother, she was encouraged to pass as white because she appeared as such. Birdie developed a “split awareness” (Boudreau 62). This split awareness relates to the “Elemenos” being a “shifting people,” as mentioned previously. Like the “Elemenos,” Birdie is blending into her surroundings with her mother by being white and acting white. Caucasia may not only be referring to physical worlds or imaginary worlds, but also symbolic places that Birdie is in. For example, Senna could be using the idea of strange worlds to better illustrate Birdie and Cole’s journey through childhood into adolescence. The girls travel to different locations, and through this, they learn more about the world and themselves. In Birdie’s point of view, Senna writes, “…either in Brazil or Oakland, living all these years as my father’s daughter. We were sisters, but we were as separate in our experiences as two sisters could be” (409).

Birdie reflects on her life and how different it was from Cole’s. They lived with varying parents of different races and in different locations. Birdie and Cole’s individual lives were impacted by the places they lived in. At the end of the novel, when Birdie is living in California, she sees a girl who looks like her on a school bus (Senna 413). When she went to school, most of the students resembled her sister, making her stick out. In California, she notices the diversity. This is interesting to her because, in her school, the students were mostly black. However, because Birdie has traveled to different places, she experiences things that help her grow. The various locations each girl lived in opened their eyes and taught them different things about themselves.

Goldman which explains my choice in jewelry. The selection of texts that we have read throughout this semester has been one that I have learned a lot from and have been able to relate to the events of my own crazy life. The ones that have stuck out the most to me throughout the semester are Jasmine by Bharti Muckerjee, What Means Switch by Gish Jen and Drown by Junot Díaz. I found them all to be incredibly relevant to my life and the struggles that I have gone through. The unifying theme of Identity and all of the factors that play into that taught me a lot about my own Identity.

Starting with Jasmine by Bharti Muckerjee, the main characters struggle with finding herself and her idea that, to recreate your Identity, you must first destroy your old one, really stuck out to me. Her nomadic existence and need to recreate herself to fit her new circumstances resonated with me, as I had to do the same thing when I was on the run with my mother. One of the quotes that highlighted this idea was, “There are no simple, compassionate ways to remake oneself. We murder who we were so we can rebirth ourselves in the images of dreams” (Muckerjee 29). This quotation and the idea behind it taught me a lot about the recreation of one’s Identity. They reminded me a lot of the period in my life where I had to become a new person, and everything from my past life felt like “remnants from the life of some other girl whom I barely knew anymore, anthropological artifacts of some ancient, extinct people, rather than pieces of my past. And the name Jesse Goldman no longer felt so funny, so thick on my tongue, so make-believe” (Senna 190). This is how I imagine Jasmine felt as she “Shuttled between identities” (Muckerjee 77). The biggest thing I learned from that book is that you do not become the person that you want to become overnight; who you are is all of your experiences put together, and we are continually changing and evolving based on what is happening around us.

The next text that I will be discussing is What Means Switch by Gish Jen. This text stuck out to me because of the main character’s struggle with trying to act like her peers think she should serve based on her race. I went through similar efforts during my time at a mostly black school called Nkrumah as well as when I was around my dad and his girlfriend Carmen. I felt that I needed to act like “the right kind of black” to please them. A quote from What Means Switch that highlights this feeling is “in eighth grade, what people want to hear does not include how Chinese people eat sliced tomatoes with sugar on top” (Jen). She felt that she had to live up to a confident expectation that everyone around her had. It was because of this text that I learned that who you are and how you act should not depend on how others think you should be.

The final text that I will be talking about is Drown by Junot Díaz. The reason that this text stuck out to me is because of the differences in the two main characters and how it affected where they both ended up in life. Beto and his differences from everyone else in the community allow him to think beyond it, which gives him the motivation to leave. At the same time, Yunior fits into the city, which means that he stays put and has no motivation to move. The two boys grew up to be so different despite being practically attached at the hip as children. This reminded me of my sister and me. When we were younger, and it was just us in our little world, it was like we were the same person. “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 existence” (Senna 5). Then as we got older, the more people treated us differently, the more different we became. The quote that stuck with me from this text is when Beto is talking to Yunior, and he says, “You need to learn how to walk the world, he told me. There’s a lot out there.” (Díaz 102). Beto is trying to get Yunior to step out of his comfort zone and experience things to form his own Identity. This text taught me that the way people treat you could affect how you see yourself and consequently, how you decide to live your life.

Racial Ideology is based on racial etiquette. “Racial etiquette” was established by the pure group; it is the rule, and the “black” people cannot speak, look, gesture, or even walk to close to a white man or woman. That is why race is a social construction. It’s not natural but somewhat artificial. Everything which defined race is just people’s thought, and it is not the same. In Caucasia, racial etiquette was described through the communication between the police officer and Deck lee (Birdie’s farther). He tried to prove that he is Birdie’s more considerably, but nobody believes him even he showed his identification card and a photograph of Birdie and Cole. This situation makes the reader feel angry because it was not fair for Deck Lee; they just defined him through their thought. And this act of police proves that race is a political struggle. The first day at school, Birdie’s mother tried to tell the woman that Cole and Birdie are sisters, but the woman glanced at Birdie, a swan smile on her slip even in the educational environment race still exists (Senna 36).  Then when Birdie and Cole went to school, they try to organize to others. Cole was the more comfortable pass, but Birdie was not. Birdie tries to become blacker so she can be the same race as other students in school. She tried to make up to be more black. When we meet a person, the first thing you want to know, along with their gender is their race. This habit might make the person feels not comfortable with being categorized.  This is a kind of amateur thinking or a childish way of explaining the difference in humans. Film and television and magazine help (in a negative direction) these entertainments help people define a person’s race. But it makes the race concept more changeable.

For example, In Caucasia, Cole said: “We talk like white girls, Birdie.” She picked up the magazine she had been reading and hand it to me. “We don’t talk like black people”….Cole continued:” They have an example in here. Like, don’t say, ‘I’m going to the store.’ Say, ‘I’m goin’ to de sto.’ (Senna 53). Magazine and television have an essential effect on people, especially our children. It makes people think that they should change their racial group to organize society. But everything they make to pass the race that they want just to make them feel more different from others. This such a social concept and political struggle.

In conclusion, according to Senna, race is a continuously changing social concept, and this concept is not constant. It is established by society and being transformed through political struggles (Omi Winant 7). The perception of race is different in different places and different cultures. It makes a person who mixed feels more uncomfortable. In Caucasia, Birdie and Cole struggled with their competition. Nobody believed they are sisters. Primarily it was Birdie. Her race change over time in different places, for example, her race was White when she was at home, but her run was changed into black when she studied at school. It makes her feel unconfident when going to school or a public place. We should not label a person to a racial group because it makes somebody who feels uncomfortable with their race. The race is existing in people’s thought, and it does not exist if we are not aware of the difference between humans.  As humankind progresses, our way of thinking becomes more complex, as does the world around us. Thus, we cannot just define and value a person base on their race. It is a terrible habit, and we should break it.

Works Cited

Boudreau, Brenda. “Letting the Body Speak: ‘Becoming’ White in Caucasia.” Modern Language Studies, vol. 32, no. 1, 2002, pp. 59-70. EBSCOhost

Senna, Danzy. Caucasia. Riverhead Books, 1999.

Leverette, Tru. “Re-Visions of Difference in Danzy Senna’s Caucasia.” Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora, vol. 12, no. 1, 2011, pp. 110-127. EBSCOhost

Moore, Geneva Cobb. “Caucasia’s Migrating Bodies: Lessons in American History and Postmodernism.” Western Journal of Black Studies, vol. 36, no. 2, 2012, pp. 108-118. EBSCOhost

Jen, Gish. “What Means Switch.” Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and

Writers. Eds. John Schilb and John Clifford. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000. 1109–21. Print.

Muckerjee, Bharti. Jasmine. New York, Grovepress, 1989.