"Caucasia"

In Danny Senza’s “Caucasia”, Birdie wrestles with her identity crisis as a racially ambiguous girl caught between the world of her mother and the world of her father. She is coming of age in the era of the black power movement, and is conflicted between her black roots, and her more white appearance. In white culture, “one drop” of black blood will assign her a black social identity. When she is on the run with her mother, she is forced to pretend to be a half Jewish girl and assume this identity. She must distance herself from her black identity, and is forced to hide even her shock at the way white people discuss blacks in a white-only environment. In black culture, she is not ‘black enough’ to fit the black standard of beauty. Her sister is effortless in the way she assimiliates into black culture, but like the discomfort Birdie later experienced with white culture, she also is not truly at ease in black culture either. As a schoolgirl at a private black power school, she was teased for being too white; her straight hair and pale skin alienated her. I think that this is cryptically aligned with what her Aunt Dot says, talking to Birdie after her time in India. “Its funny. When you leave your home and wader really far, you always think ‘I want to go home.’… (and) from then on there’s always this yearning for some place that doesn’t exist.”. This is Birdie’s situation; she is split between worlds, yearning for some invisible place in between to call her own.