42 pages • 1-hour read
Caucasia
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Part 1, Chapters 1-3
Part 1: “negritude for beginners”
Chapter 1 Summary: “face”
The first chapter describes how Birdie relates to her family, particularly her sister. From the time Birdie was born, she describes being close to her sister Cole, who is three years older. Cole is “cinnamon-skinned” and “curly-haired” (5). Birdie always saw Cole’s face as a reflection of her own. Only at the end of the chapter, when her mother comments that Birdie looks “Sicilian” (26), does she realize that her pale skin and straight dark hair make people think that she and her sister are not related.
Birdie and Cole share a secret language called Elemeno. The chapter introduces the rest of the family and the novel’s main characters, who all have some relation to the Black Power Movement in 1970s Boston. Birdie’s father Deck is a black intellectual who writes books on race theory, while her mother Sandy is a white grassroots activist who hosts meetings in their basement and hides radicals who are running from the FBI. There is thick racial tension between Birdie’s parents, partly because of their differing political philosophies, and at the end of the chapter, they separate.
Chapter 2 Summary: “same difference”
Chapter 2 begins with eight-year-old Birdie’s desire to understand her parents’ relationship and what their life was like before she was born. She notes that they do not have a wedding album, only a wedding photo she found in the pages of a book that shows her young mother in a bohemian dress and her father in a stiff suit. Nervous, smiling family members surround them. Sandy’s father was a Harvard classics professor, and Deck was one of his students. Sandy, who was fat and shy, was surprised when Deck asked her out. She tells Birdie and Cole that she was interested in the plight of the Negro and wanted Deck to know that she was on his side.
Sandy sends Birdie and Cole to a private Afrocentric school so they can avoid separation and bussing to white school districts. Birdie struggles to fit in because she looks white, while Cole struggles because Sandy does not know how to fix her hair. The girls realize they must learn to look, act, and speak like their black classmates, and after educating themselves through Jet (50) and Ebony (53) magazine, they soon gain acceptance.
Birdie notices that her father pays more attention to Cole when the three of them are together: “Cole was his proof that he had survived the integrationist shuffle […]. Her existence told him he hadn’t wandered quite so far and that his body still held the power to leave its mark” (56). This sentiment speaks to Deck’s anxiety about having married and had children with a white woman. Birdie’s light skin gives him away, while Cole’s darker looks allow him to feel like the father of a black child.
One day Cole is sick, and Birdie goes to the park alone with her father. An older white couple sees them and calls the police, who question Deck about why he is with a white child. They do not believe Deck is Birdie’s father even when he shows them a family photograph from his wallet. Birdie begins to realize that her father is uncomfortable being alone with her because he knows how others will perceive them.
Chapter 3 Summary: “the body of luce rivera”
Birdie’s family starts to change after the separation. Birdie has become close friends with a girl in her class and is spending less time with Cole. Cole has become closer to their father and has begun to mimic his politics. When Birdie tries to do the same, saying, “Stay black, stay strong, brotherman” (73), her father only laughs.
Birdie notices that Sandy is changing, too. She has become distracted and unkempt, and her activism has become more secretive. At the same time, she is reverting to her Wasp upbringing. Sandy is uncomfortable when Birdie and Cole use black speech and mannerisms. Without Deck, Sandy relaxes her efforts to foster her girls’ black identity, and in doing so, she reveals her prejudices.
Sandy begins to take the girls out of school, believing that Cointelpro—the FBI’s political counterintelligence arm—is following her. She steals candy bars from a grocery store, and when Cole refuses to eat one, Sandy tells her that she has been spending too much time with her father (81). This comment and Cole’s refusal signal that the family is slowly breaking into camps based on their respective identities. Birdie feels that she has a duty to her mother, even as she notices that she is becoming unhinged. Without naming race as the factor that divides the family, Birdie recognizes that her whiteness puts her on her mother’s side, just as Cole’s blackness put her on her father’s.
Part 1, Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The first three chapters set up the racial and family dynamics that provide the basis for the plot’s main conflict. These chapters chart Birdie’s growing awareness of how race operates in society and in her own life. It is notable that even though Birdie and Cole are technically mixed race, having one black and one white parent, they feel compelled to identify as either white or black. There is no third option. Therefore, the girls’ appearance, or phenotype, plays a major role in how the girls define themselves—and how society defines them. Senna adroitly sets up this racial conundrum; the mounting social and political pressures on the family force them to declare their racial allegiance. No matter how committed Sandy’s black allyship, or how strong the sisters’ bond, their perceived racial identities gradually pull them apart.
These chapters demonstrate Birdie’s ability to transform her identity based on the needs of the moment. Through Elemeno, she internalized the concept of shapeshifting. Elemeno is not just a language, but “a shifting people, constantly changing their form, color, pattern, in a quest for invisibility” (7). She and her sister created a fantasy world where camouflage was a survival skill. But the concept does not sit well with Birdie. She asks: “What was the point of surviving if you had to disappear?” (7). This question resonates with Birdie’s real-world dilemma of having to act alternately black or white based on the group with which she has to associate.
Unlike Cole, who cannot pass for white, Birdie’s features are ambiguous enough that she can shift her identity on the racial spectrum. In fact, she is the only one in her family who can do so. The situation creates a unique emotional and psychological burden for Birdie. While her family was still together, she was black. When her family separates, for her mother’s safety, she must become white. The cost of shifting identities is high. Birdie must navigate these changes constantly and therefore feels like she is losing herself.
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