Disappearing Girl
Caucasia by Danzy Senna
Originally published in Creative Loafing. I am reprinting some of my early writing here, which is no longer available online.
“I disappeared into America, the easiest place to get lost.”
Danzy Senna’s first novel Caucasia is the story of a disappearance, not just the disappearance of Birdie and her mother, Sandy, but of Birdie’s identity. “I disappeared into America,” she says, “the easiest place to get lost.”
Birdie and her sister Cole are two children at the mercy of their parents’ flightly behavior. They speak to each other in their own language, “Elemeno,” providing each other with an enviable intimacy. But while Cole can easily pass for black, Birdie’s appearance is more ambiguous: she is variously taken for Jewish, Sicilian, even Pakistani, but seldom ever African-American.
Birdie’s white mother is heavily involved in the underground civil rights movement. Her father Deck is black, a man more devoted to his thought life than his family life. After Deck leaves for Brazil with Cole and his young, black girlfriend, Sandy panics and decides she and Birdie must leave Boston for fear of Federal agents nabbing her for whatever underground activities she has been involved in. She pulls Birdie out of school — just as she was making…
