A review by sakusha
Caucasia by Danzy Senna

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

The book was well written, using those writing techniques I learned in college. The characters are three dimensional, with detailed past histories. I think Caucasia was a bad title for the book though. A better title might be “On the Spectrum of Color” or “The White Sister.” It reminded me of “The Invisible Man,” only taking place in the 70s and with a young girl protagonist instead. The story was interesting to read, but I only give it 4/5 stars because the protagonist was racist, even if the form of racism she had was was the kind that is in fashion right now.

The book shows that minorities in America hate America and think they have it bad (74, 267), but it’s just as bad (if not worse) in other countries like Brazil (346).

It shows that blacks were perpetuating racism just as much as whites were (36-37). Birdie and her sister Cole were favored or disfavored based on the race they looked like, even by their own family members. The black father and stepmom favored the black looking daughter (96). The white grandma favored the white looking daughter (85). The disfavored child is ignored by the adult. That’s racist. But I wonder if Birdie had her own children with a black man, would she favor the black child more just because of its color? Would Birdie be just as racist?

Even though Birdie is half black and half white, she considers herself black. When she lives as a white girl, she considers it pretending (334). Birdie thinks of being white as a negative thing, something she doesnt want to be.  If the book were written the other way around, it would be called racist. In today’s world, it’s acceptable to speak negatively of being white, but the truth is thats just as racist as speaking negatively of being a minority. 

I thought it was interesting that Birdie was so willing to abandon her mom (who happened to be white) in favor of searching for her black dad and sister, the ones she really wanted to live with, even though her dad ignored Birdie in the past and never seemed to like her. Birdie and her mother both disliked the white grandma, but they came to her whenever they needed money, and the white grandma generously gave it despite disagreeing with their way of life.

Birdie’s mom Sandy admits to being prejudiced against the white Southern accent, which “made her suspect a person of great evil” (251). That’s funny since the black accent is very similar to the white Southern accent, since blacks learned to speak English in the south where they were slaves. Yet we’re supposed to assume that Sandy doesn’t have a prejudice against blacks or their accent since she married a black and fights for their civil rights. White liberals want to hate southern whites and love blacks, but they ignore the southern roots of blacks.

Birdie’s dad said, “These overeducated pompous Negro fools in the academy have everything, and still want to feel like victims. They’re addicted to racism, because once you got money and the approval of the white academy, you NEED something to remind you that you’re not a total sellout” (338). Just like the overeducated mostly-white liberals who keep racism alive by continuously talking about it and inventing problems that nobody of minority status even cares about, like changing the name of some sports team or the person on maple syrup or cream of wheat or tearing down statues of people nobody even remembers.

Birdie’s dad theorized that “mulattos had historically been the gauge of how poisonous American race relations were. The fate of the mulatto in history and in literature, he said, will manifest the symptoms that will eventually infect the rest of the nation” (335). Interesting. But my theory is that if any race is treated poorly, that means there is racism going on. Biracial people just get treated like whatever race they look like, as this book shows. So I don’t think mulattos are particularly special in any way at determining the racism level of a country.

This book shows why school sucks:

Birdie was homeschooled in the beginning. On Birdie’s first day of real school, a boy threw a spitball at her. “All eyes were on me” (37). I see that when a new person comes into a group setting, the first thing the group does is assess the newbie’s place in the group’s hierarchy. The boy is testing her, and everyone waits to see her response. Her response determines her place in the hierarchy. If she stays quiet, she is placed low in the hierarchy, a victim to pick on or ignore. But if she acts out aggressively, she may be feared or respected. Birdie stays quiet. School is a terrible place for pitting kids against each other like this. Putting up with aggression or becoming aggressive, loss of self-esteem.

At school, Birdie learned “how to become someone else, how to erase the person I was before” (53). She feels “a yearning to belong to something ordinary” (187). Conformity, denial of self. 

Kids are allowed to get away with things that adults can’t get away with: harassment, sexual harassment, assault, destruction of property, etc. Birdie’s mom Sandy thinks that the teenagers who threw a rock at their car window and cracked it should just be ignored because “they were children. Teenagers. Pranksters” (224). It’s against the law for an 18 year old and a 17 year old to have sex, but it’s not against the law for a 13 year old and a 12 year old to have sex. Parents try to protect their kids from cussing, drugs, and sex, but they send them to school where the other kids snap their bras and talk about fucking. The double standard is disgusting.

Unrelated note:
From Camus’s diary, dated 11/11/1942: “Outside of love, woman is boring” (27). I think many women would feel the same of men. Tis because they have different interests, partly because of natural predispositions, and partly because of social conditioning. 
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