42 pages • 1 hour read
Danzy SennaCaucasia
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Waning Black Power Movement
The novel begins in 1975, toward the end of the Black Power Movement. The movement, which formed in the post-Civil Rights era of the 1960s, advocated for racial pride, political equality, Afrocentric education, and economic self-sufficiency for African Americans. The Black Power Movement was controversial because, unlike the Civil Rights Movement, it did not eschew violence as a means of political resistance. The FBI targeted these activists through their domestic counterintelligence arm, Cointelpro, which was notorious for persecuting activist groups deemed subversive to American society. Cointelpro was mostly active during the 1960s and early 1970s.
This timeline is significant because Sandy Lee’s illegal activities—harboring activists wanted by Cointelpro or Interpol—takes place when the hardline Black Power movement is dying down and black activism is becoming more mainstream. Deck says that Sandy is “ten years too late to be storing radicals” (22). Sandy is surprised that Deck does not approve of her activism: “I told you not to mess with those crazy thugs” (118), he tells her. His use of the word “thugs” smacks of judgment and signals that he does not see himself as part of their group.
Boston’s shifting political reality provides the perfect context for Sandy’s paranoia. One day while they are still in Boston, Birdie finds her mother huddled behind the couch saying: “[T]hey’re trying to drive me mad. They’re trying to drive us all mad. They’re everywhere. They’re in the house now, you know. They’re listening to us as we speak” (76). Sandy indicates an unmarked green van parked across the street, assuming that it is conducting surveillance. While she could be right, her speech sounds frantic and disconnected, throwing her rationality into doubt. Her fear is so strong that she and Birdie live under assumed identities for six years. Another example of her questionable reasoning comes when she fails to find a mention of her name under “Wanted” in the newspaper while she and Birdie are on the run.
Sandy believes “Cointelpro is clearly in cahoots with the media” (127). Some might call this a paranoid delusion. On the other hand, Cointelpro arrested a number of her friends, including Linda, whose lover informed on her (350). Sandy’s family and friends cannot find consensus on whether she was really in danger. At the end of the novel, Sandy still seems to be living in fear; when Cole and Birdie arrange to meet her in the summer, Sandy says they should “meet her in New York, at Penn Station, where we wouldn’t stand out” (411). It seems she is content to live her life as Sheila Goldman, and is still uncomfortable about people seeing her with her black daughters.
Mixed Race Identity, Fluidity, and Passing
The novel’s central conflict revolves around Birdie’s mixed-race identity and her ethnically ambiguous looks. For most of the novel, Birdie’s only goal is to make herself legible to those around her. America’s racial divisions make Birdie’s dilemma inevitable; not until she arrives in Berkeley does she experience a community in which mixed-race people don’t stand out. Birdie’s ability to change into whatever identity she might need makes her identity fluid and puts her in a socially and emotionally precarious position.
Despite crossing racial lines, all those around Birdie have fixed racial identities. Though Sandy is involved in the Black Power movement, she is white and cannot be otherwise. Though Deck has a white wife and mixed-race daughters, he is still black. Though Cole is mixed-race like Birdie, her looks make it possible for her to adopt a black identity that no one questions. Even Samantha Taper, who is mixed-race, cannot blend into her white surroundings the way Birdie can and has no black community as an alternative.
Birdie’s racial fluidity might seem like an advantage; if she can adopt any identity, she might find acceptance anywhere. However, through painstaking descriptions of Birdie’s efforts to blend in, Senna shows how the process erodes Birdie’s sense of self.
One might argue that Birdie should stick to her real self: half-white, half-black. But in the 1970s, society did not accept or understand the concept of a mixed-race individual. Loving versus Virginia is the landmark court case that, in 1967, made marriage between a white and a black person legal for the first time in American history. This is the year Birdie was born. Birdie’s parents met in 1963, when miscegenation (interracial breeding) was still illegal and uncommon. Birdie was born at a time when interracial couples, and thus mixed-race children, were rare. Her father tells her that hers is the first generation to survive mixed-race discrimination (393), and Ronnie Parkman tells her: “I remember thinking your parents were such great mad scientists, embarking on this marvelous, ambitious experiment with you and your sister” (349). Based on Ronnie’s comment, people didn’t view mixed-race as natural, like the mules for which “mulattos” are named. Birdie only regains a sense of her true identity when she reunites with her sister. In California, they will be able to live as mixed-race women together.
Building Cultural Identity
References to singers, songs, books, and authors abound in Caucasia, and they function as symbols of racial and cultural identity. Part 1’s title: “negritude for beginners” is a reference to the Negritude literary movement of the 1930s-1950s. The movement asserted the importance of black identity around the world to combat European colonialism and white supremacy. Cole’s parents named her for the early 1900s French writer Colette (19), who wrote a series of coming-of-age-novels. Birdie mentions that two of her parents’ favorite writers are the existentialist Albert Camus and the African-American author Richard Wright (18). Deck is an academic, and his book The Wonders of the Visible World is about “the fate of black people in an integrated society” (27). The theme represents Deck’s personal quest for belonging. He became disillusioned with his interracial relationship and sought a new family in Brazil with Carmen and Cole. When that does not work, he moves on to yet another book on race theory that contradicts his previous beliefs.
When Birdie returns to Boston and stays with Dot, she looks through her music collection: “She had a mix of seventies soul and Indian religious music. I chose the soul and blasted Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, the Isley Brothers, and wondered what to do next” (330). Dot tells Birdie that it was hearing Roberta Flack in India that prompted her to return to the United States: “I didn’t want to be so far from black American music, the greatest music in the world” (314). Part 3’s title “compared to what” is a reference to a Roberta Flack lyric.
Cultural reference points are a way to signal belonging, and Birdie’s references span the cultural spectrum. Sandy homeschooled Birdie, having her read the Brontës, Charles Dickens, Richard Wright, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Franz Fanon, among others (137). In New Hampshire, Birdie’s teachers are impressed and somewhat bewildered when she references these writers (243). New Hampshire’s music provides a contrast to the soul music Birdie loves. Kenny Rogers, Fleetwood Mac, The Doors, and rock music at first sounds to Birdie like “a bunch of trash cans rolling down a hill” (170). As her identity shifts, she listens to more of this music, and even begins to enjoy it. The significance of these musical and literary images is that they show how society constructs identity; they define racial, cultural, and intellectual boundaries. Birdie’s exposure to and assimilation of so many different types of music and literature further emphasize the complexity of her identity.
