Praise for Caucasia
“Lucid and magnificent.”—James McBride, author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
“The visual conundrums woven through Danzy Senna’s remarkable first novel [will] cling to your memory. There’s Birdie, who takes after her mother’s white, New England side of the family—light skin, straight hair. There’s her big sister, Cole, who takes after her father, a radical black intellectual. It’s the early seventies, and black-power politics divide their parents, who divide the sisters; Cole disappears with their father, and Birdie goes underground with their mother…Senna tells this coming-of-age tale with impressive beauty and power.”—Newsweek
“[An] absorbing debut novel…Senna superbly illustrates the emotional toll that politics and race take on one especially gutsy young girl’s development as she makes her way through the parallel limbos between black and white and between girl and young woman…Senna gives new meaning to the twin universal desires for a lost childhood and a new adult self by recounting Birdie’s struggle to become someone when she can look and act like anyone.”—The New York Times Book Review
”Extraordinary…A cross between Mona Simpson’s Anywhere But Here and James McBride’s The Color of Water, this story of a young girl’s struggle—to find her family, her roots, her identity—transcends race even while examining it. A compelling look at being black and being white, Caucasia deserves to be read all over.”—Glamour
“Brilliant…a finely nuanced story that explores the matter of race through the eyes and heart of another white black girl.”—Ms. Magazine
”Senna brings an accomplished voice to this vivid coming-of-age tale, offering images sweet and sorrowful of a child caught on the fault line between races.”—USA Today
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