Summary Of The Novel 'Caucasia' By Dannzy Senna

To me, Caucasia by Dannzy Senna, is a great novel, which weaves through difficult topics into a sensitive, absorbing read. In essence, Caucasia is a well-crafted “coming of age story” that highlights the strict confines of race. The novel mainly shares the journey of Birdie Lee, a young bi-racial girl who was growing up in Boston in the mid 1970’s. We learn Bridie’s father is black and her mother is white; and Bridie’s older sister Cole has dark skin, while Bridie is more light skinned. Eventually, the girl’s parents can’t get along at all, and this causes the family to fall apart. The two girls are then forced to go with the parent whose race fits their looks. The main plot of the novel concerns Bridie’s various struggles, from living a false …show more content…
We learn her older sister Cole, who again is more dark-skinned, is sick, so she stays home with her mother Sandy. So, Bridie and Deck go out to the “Public Gardens”, to have their day together, to try and connect and have some fun. Bridie, immediately feels closer to him now, and was clearly happy in the moment. But soon, as Bridie and her father lie in the grass near a tree, they decide they were hungry, so Bridie gets up to go to the little hot dog stand nearby. As she does so, she notices an older couple staring at her and her father, with their little dog. As describes it, the couple frowns at Bridie, trying to figure out the situation, and jumps to the wrong conclusion. As she gets back over to her father, she keeps looking back at the couple to see if they were still staring; and reacting, they still were. Bridie’s father doesn’t then, say anything, or hasn’t noticed them, so Bridie just assumed she was over reacting and so ignores and doesn’t mention anything to Deck. After a little while she evidently forgets about the staring couple at the two of them-but then suddenly notices them again: “And when I tilted my head slightly to the side, I saw again that strange couple, pointing at me” (page 59). Plus this time they were now talking to police officers, who then came over to talk to Bridie, still obviously “profiling” Deck by his looks -“All right, brother man, …show more content…
Sadly, we have police officers killing black people, based on that color. We have a recent story, for example, in the beginning of August, about a group of black women who were kicked off the Napa Valley wine train for laughing, and being too loud, but really more because they were black. Apparently a customer complained, and the eight members were paraded or “perp-walked” through six cars and then forced to get off the train. Once they did so they were then met with police. Yet we learn there were other women on the bus too, who were doing the same thing, but these ladies weren’t kicked off, arguably because they were white. This “double standard” (for behavior) obviously ridiculous, and racist, and clearly something needs to be changed about it now. It seems racial discrimination is not getting out of control again in this country, and still we wonder why it should even matter what our skin color is. Or, as the spokesperson for this group put it: "That was the most humiliating experience that I have ever had in my entire life," she said with tears in her eyes at a news conference after the event. "This is 2015, and this just cannot happen again." (ABC News). And to help see that it doesn’t, the group quickly filed a law suit against Napa Valley Wine. I believe when people are