Danzy Sena Short Biography

Danzy Senna is a very powerful author who uses her platform to express how she feels about controversial topics of her time. She is a novelist and essayist whose written three novels, a memoir, and a short story collection, along with multiple essays. She has received many awards and praises for her works and creative stories. Senna is a dynamic author with many opinions and views that approach situations that are still issues in today’s society. Growing up in a biracial home, Senna was given the opportunity to experience forms of racism and prejudice that other individuals might not have been able to relate with. Senna comes from a family of authors and writing isn’t a strange world to her and it came easy to her when her time came (“Danzy Senna.”). Danzy Senna is a dynamic writer because of her background and her work mirrors where she comes from; and that energy flows into her first book Caucasia. …show more content…
She was born in 1970 in Boston, Massachusetts to Carl Senna and Fanny Howe (“Danzy Senna.”). Carl was in the process of trying to start his career as a writer and Fanny came from a wealthy family (“Danzy Senna's Racial History”). Senna was the middle of three children from an interracial relationship (“Danzy Senna.”), her father was Black and Mexican and her mother was White. Senna refers to their relationship as an “interracial couple out of a dream” in her memoir Where Did You Sleep Last Night? In the memoir she recalls their short marriage being filled with extreme fights and physical abuse, resulting in her mother getting a restraining order. Her father then turned to alcoholism and later went AWOL. Howe raised her children on welfare and she sometimes sent her children as props to receive money from their father. Danzy also states in her book that when she wrote her first novel, Caucasia, her father didn’t call to congratulate her but to ask for a loan