Domaine : LLA

Etablissement : FLLA
Filière : LICENCE
____________________________________________________________________

SYLLABUS DE COURS

Intitulé du parcours : Licence fondamentale en Anglais

Semestre d’évolution : Harmattan 3

Code et intitulé de l’enseignement : ANG 311 Littérature américaine

Nombre de crédits : 4

Jour, horaire et salle de l’enseignement :

Enseignant responsable de l’UE : BEGEDOU Komi, M.A., Littérature

Américaine, 90 00 61 88

Disponibilité pour recevoir les étudiants (jours, heures, lieu) :

Public cible : Cette UE s’adresse aux étudiants désireux de se former à la recherche en anglais,
littérature américaine et à l’exercice du métier d’enseignement, d’écrivain etc.

Prérequis : Pour suivre cet enseignement, vous devez

- avoir validé/suivi l’UE ANG 103, ANG 105, ANG 212
- avoir des compétences en critique littéraire

Objectifs d’enseignement

- Objectif général : Cette UE vise à amener les apprenants à être capable d’identifier les auteurs
de la littérature contemporaine et analyser comment ils abordent les sujets de la diversité dans
la société américaine.

- Objectifs spécifiques : À la fin de l’UE, les étudiants seront capables de :

Identifier les auteurs américains de la littérature contemporaine

Expliquer les thématiques aborder par ces auteurs;
Analyser comment ils abordent les sujets de la diversité dans la société américaine; et
 Produire un essai sur une thématique spécifique à la littérature américaine contemporaine

Langue d’enseignement : Anglais

Bref descriptif de l’enseignement : (Dire succinctement le contenu de l’enseignement : Max

10 lignes)

Cette UE contribue à approfondir les connaissances des étudiants du semestre 5 en littérature

américaine. Elle leur permet d’analyser les textes littéraires en s’inspirant de la littérature
contemporaine américaine traitant de la diversité et de multiculturalisme. L’apprenant pourra
ainsi identifier les auteurs dont les œuvres peuvent être classées dans la rubrique de la
littérature contemporaine. Il pourra aussi analyser les caractéristiques de cette littérature. Par
ailleurs, cette UE contribue à outiller les étudiants à s’inspirer du modèle américain pour
l’acceptation de la diversité sur toutes ses formes.

Organisation de l’enseignement (objectifs, contenu /activités, méthodes

d’enseignement/apprentissage)

Séance Activités Formules et Matériel/

Objectifs N° d’enseignement/apprentissage techniques Support
pédagogiques pédagogique
Comprendre le 1 Explication du syllabus Exposé Syllabus
déroulement du Explication aux apprenants sur Démonstration de Support texte
cours comment se connecter l’accès a la Ordinateur
Explication sur les dispositions plateforme Rallonges
pratiques pour suivre les cours Ce que je sais ou Internet
sur Moodle dois savoir Projecteur
Expliquer le 2 Éléments littéraires et analyse des Lecture Textes
mécanisme de textes littéraires Connotation Syllabus
lecture et Lecture, collecte de données 100 mots au moins Scénario
d’analyse d’un pédagogique
texte littéraire
Analyser une 3 « Cathedral » de Raymond Lecture Textes
nouvelle Carver Imaginer des Syllabus
causes Scénario
QCM pédagogique
Identifier et 4 « Cathedral » de Raymond Évaluer les Textes
analyser les Carver ressources Syllabus
thèmes et les Collection Scénario
personnages dans Comparaison pédagogique
un texte littéraire
Identifier les 5 Caucasia de Danzy Senna Lecture Textes
éléments Cellule Syllabus
littéraires et d’apprentissage Scénario
interpréter le style Paraphrase pédagogique
d'écriture de
Danzy Senna
Identifier et 6 Caucasia de Danzy Senna Projet Textes
analyser les Rédiger en 100 Syllabus
thèmes et les mots ou moins Scénario
personnages dans Recherche pédagogique
un texte littéraire
Vérifier la 7 Bilan de mi-parcours avec les Partage Syllabus
compréhension étudiants ; d’expérience Scénario
des étudiants - Échanges sur les activités Plénière/tour pédagogique
effectuées en ligne ; d’horizon Sujets
- Remédiation ;
- Évaluation à mi-parcours (DST
et autres formes d’évaluation) Lecture
- Consignes pour la suite des Question-réponse
activités en ligne Remue-méninges
Comparer le 8 Caucasia de Danzy Senna Schématiser Textes
cadre et l'intrigue Chercher l’erreur Syllabus
dans Caucasia Comparaison Scénario
pédagogique
Interpréter le style 9 The Beautiful Things that Heave Recherche Textes
d'écriture de Bears de Dinaw Mengestu Remue-méninges Syllabus
Dinaw Mengestu Question-réponse Scénario
pédagogique
Identifier et 10 The Beautiful Things that Heave Partage Textes
analyser les Bears de Dinaw Mengestu Remue-méninges Syllabus
thèmes et les Question-réponse Scénario
personnages dans pédagogique
un texte littéraire
Produire un essai 11 The Beautiful Things that Heave Chercher l’erreur Textes
à partir d’une Bears de Dinaw Mengestu Remue-méninges Syllabus
œuvre littéraire Question-réponse Scénario
pédagogique
Consolider et 12 Bilan final avec les étudiants ; Ma ressource Syllabus
évaluer les - Échanges sur les activités préférée Scénario
connaissances effectuées en ligne ; Plénière/tour pédagogique
apprises
- Préparation de l’évaluation d’horizon Sujets
finale : Tutorat
- Évaluation finale des
enseignements

Evaluation
 - Contrôle continu : Le contrôle continu prendra la forme de devoir de maison à rendre après
une semaine. Le contrôle continu a un pourcentage de 50%

- Examen final : L’examen final sera une épreuve écrite et comptera pour 50%

Bibliographie

1. SENNA Danzy, Caucasia. New York, Riverhead Books, 1998

2. KENNEDY J. X. et al., The Concise Bedford Guide for Writers. New York, Bedford, 2014.
3. KIRSZNER G. Laurie and MANDELL R. Stephen, Introducing Practical Argument. New York,
Bedford, 2011.
4. MENGESTU Dinaw, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. New York, Riverhead Books,
2007
5. CARVER Raymond, “Cathedral”. New York, Penguin Random House, 1983
6. STRUNK William and WHITE E.B., The Elements of Style. Third Edition, New York, Macmillan
Publishing Co., Inc. 1979
 Week 2 : Reading Literature for Meaning
Title: Elements of Fiction
Objective: Lead learners to identify the objectives and analyze the reading techniques
that will enable them to understand and assimilate the course.
Instruction: -The students should have their course syllabus
Content:

- Elements of fiction (revision)

Plot: the arrangement and interrelation of events in a narrative work, chosen and
designed to engage the reader’s attention and interest while also providing a framework for the
exposition of the author’s message, or theme, or for other elements such as characterization,
symbol, conflict, etc. Plot is distinguished from story, which refers to a narrative of events
ordered chronologically, not selectively, and with an emphasis on establishing causality. Story
is the raw material from which plot is constructed.
Setting: the combination of place, historical time, and social milieu that provides the
general background for the characters and plot of a literary work. Setting frequently plays a
crucial role in determining the atmosphere of a work.
Characters: in its most general literary sense, a character is a figure in a literary work.
That figure need not be human, although most characters are. Characters may be animals or even
nonliving entities, provided that the author characterizes them by giving them the attributes of a
human individual.
Characterization: this term refers to the various means by which an author describes
and develops the characters in a literary work.
Point of view: the vantage point from which a narrative is told. A narrative is typically
told from a first-person or third-person point of view. Novels sometimes mix points of view.
Theme: the statement(s), express or implied, that a text seems to be making about its
subject. The term theme is generally applied to the main idea or message in a text.
 Week 3: “Cathedral”: Context and Plot
Title: “Cathedral”: Context and Plot
Objective: Analyser les éléments littéraires dans "Cathedral" de Raymond Carver
Instruction: Lire "Cathedral" de Raymond Carver (Pages 209-219)
Content:

Part 1: Biography of Raymond Carver

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Raymond-Carver

Raymond Carver, in full Raymond Clevie Carver, (born May 25, 1938, Clatskanie, Oregon,
U.S.—died August 2, 1988, Port Angeles, Washington), American short-story writer and poet
whose realistic writings about the working poor mirrored his own life.

Carver was the son of a sawmill worker. He married a year after finishing high school and
supported his wife and two children by working as a janitor, gas-station attendant, and delivery
man. He became seriously interested in a writing career after taking a creative-writing course
at Chico State College (now California State University, Chico) in 1958. His short stories began
to appear in magazines while he studied at Humboldt State College (now Humboldt State
University) in Arcata, California (B.A., 1963). Carver’s first success as a writer came in 1967
with the story “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?,” and he began writing full-time after losing
his job as a textbook editor in 1970. The highly successful short-story collection Will You
Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976) established his reputation.

Carver began drinking heavily in 1967 and was repeatedly hospitalized for alcoholism in the
1970s, while continuing to turn out short stories. After conquering his drinking problem in the
late 1970s, he taught for several years at the University of Texas at El Paso and at Syracuse
University, and in 1983 he won a literary award whose generous annual stipend freed him to
again concentrate on his writing full-time. His later short-story collections were What We Talk
About When We Talk About Love (1981), Cathedral (1984), and Where I’m Calling From
(1988). While his short stories were what made his critical reputation, he was also an
accomplished poet in the realist tradition of Robert Frost. Carver’s poetry collections include
At Night the Salmon Move (1976), Where Water Comes Together with Other Water (1985),
and Ultramarine (1986). He died of lung cancer at age 50.

In his short stories Carver chronicled the everyday lives and problems of the working poor in
the Pacific Northwest. His blue-collar characters are crushed by broken marriages, financial
problems, and failed careers, but they are often unable to understand or even articulate their
own anguish. Carver’s stripped-down, minimalist prose style is remarkable for its honesty and
power. He is credited with helping revitalize the genre of the English-language short story in
the late 20th century.

However, controversy arose over the nature of Carver’s writing—and even his lasting literary
reputation—in the early 21st century. It was revealed that his long-time editor, Gordon Lish,
had drastically changed many of Carver’s early stories. While Lish’s significant involvement in
Carver’s writing had long been suspected, the extent of his editing became public knowledge
when, in 2007, Carver’s widow, the poet Tess Gallagher, announced that she was seeking to
publish the original versions of the stories in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
(which appeared as Beginners in the United Kingdom and also as part of the Library of
America’s Raymond Carver: Collected Stories [both 2009]). Lish was shown to have changed
characters’ names, cut the length of many stories (over 75 percent of the text in two cases),
and altered the endings of some stories. However, most of Carver’s famously terse sentences
were his own, as was the hallmark bleak working-class milieu of the short stories.

Brief Biography of Raymond Carver

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/cathedral#context
The son of a sawmill worker, Raymond Carver graduated from high school and worked
a number of blue-collar jobs (janitor, gas-station attendant, delivery man) to support his wife
and children. Carver did not begin writing seriously until 1958, when he took a college creative
writing course taught by the celebrated mid-century writer John Gardner. Carver continued to
work on his short fiction while studying at California’s Humboldt State University, from which
he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1963. A few of Carver’s stories were published by magazines
but it was not until 1976 that his work was first published in a book-length collection called Will
You Please Be Quiet, Please? The book was a finalist for the 1977 National Book Award in
fiction. From 1967 through the late 1970s, Carver battled alcoholism and was hospitalized
multiple times. By the late 1970s, Carver was able to get a handle on his disease and then
took teaching appointments at the University of Texas at El Paso and Syracuse. Over the
course of the 1980s, he published three collections of short stories: What We Talk About When
We Talk About Love (1981), the Pulitzer Prize finalist Cathedral (1983), and Where I’m Calling
From (1988). Carver also wrote poetry and published three collections of his verse from 1976
through 1986. Carver died of lung cancer at age 50 in 1988.

Part 2: Context of “Cathedral”

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/cathedral#context

Historical Context of Cathedral

The minimalist movement—which also swept American visual arts, architecture, and
music composition in the 1980s—can be seen as artists’ response to the social, political and
cultural circumstances of late twentieth century America. Some scholars see minimalism, with
its characteristic terse style and melancholy subjects, as a response to the psychological
trauma of the Vietnam War. Others note that minimalism, with its spare prose and few
descriptions of material goods, was a response to America’s rising post-World War II consumer
culture.

Other Books Related to “Cathedral”

In the 1980s, Raymond Carver was one of the most feted writers in America. Under the
guidance of the prominent editor Gordon Lish, Carver’s Cathedral as well as his earlier works
(Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love) were
held up by literary critics as the premier texts of American minimalism. Other hallmark texts
from this “new wave” of American fiction include the work of Ann Beattie (Distortions, Secrets
and Surprises, Where You’ll Find Me), Amy Hempel’s Reasons to Live, Tobias Wolff’s In the
Garden of the North American Martyrs, and Grace Paley’s Later the Same Day.
Key Facts about « Cathedral »

 Full Title: Cathedral

 When Written: Port Angeles, Washington
 Where Written: 1982
 When Published: 1983
  Literary Period: Minimalism
 Genre: Fiction (Short Story)
 Setting: A couple’s home in Connecticut
 Climax: After watching a television program on the cathedrals of Europe, the narrator
undertakes the transformative activity of drawing a cathedral so that he can show
Robert the blind man what cathedrals are like.
 Antagonist: At first, it seems like Robert the blind man is the antagonist, but by the
end of the story it is clear that the nameless narrator is his own greatest antagonist.
 Point of View: First-person

Part : Plot summary

Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” opens with an internal monologue in which the narrator
expresses his hesitation about hosting Robert, a blind man who is a friend of the narrator’s
wife. The narrator remembers the circumstances that precipitated the friendship between his
wife and Robert. His wife, in need of money and engaged to her first husband, took a summer
job assisting Robert, a social worker. At the end of the summer, Robert asked the narrator’s
wife if he could see her by touching her face, and the experience was a deeply memorable
one for the narrator’s wife. The narrator also recounts how his wife reached out to Robert for
support after an unsuccessful suicide attempt fueled by her miserable relationship with her
husband, whose military career caused them to have a nomadic existence.

Snapping out of his internal monologue, the narrator makes cynical jokes about Robert’s
blindness, asking his wife if he should take Robert bowling. She protests and implores him to
be kind to Robert, who is spending the night at their house after a visit with his recently
deceased wife’s family. The narrator asks rude questions about Robert’s wife, and the
narrator’s frustrated wife explains Robert’s marriage to his late wife Beulah. The woman had
worked for Robert the summer after the narrator’s wife did. They married soon after. The
narrator then contemplates this marriage, thinking how sad it must have been for Robert’s wife
to not have been visually appreciated by her husband.

The narrator’s wife then retrieves Robert from the train station and brings him back to their
house. While the narrator’s wife is very accommodating to Robert, the narrator is insensitive.
He asks Robert what side of the train he sat on, since the right side of the train is the one with
the good view. The narrator avoids Robert’s questions about his life and bristles when Robert
refers to him as “bub.” They have a drink and then eat a large dinner.

After a hearty meal and cherry pie, the trio sit back down in the living room and Robert
continues his efforts to get to know the narrator. The narrator answers Robert’s questions curtly
and then turns on the television to prevent Robert from asking any more questions. The
narrator’s wife goes upstairs to change, and while she’s away, the narrator and Robert smoke
marijuana. When the narrator’s wife returns she joins them, and soon all three characters are
drowsy.

The narrator’s wife falls asleep on the couch, and the narrator begins looking for a program to
watch on television. After flipping around indecisively the narrator settles on one about the
cathedrals of Europe. The narrator realizes that Robert cannot fully appreciate this program
since he can’t see the visuals of cathedrals being shown. He attempts to describe the
cathedral’s ornate architecture. This is a struggle for him, so Robert suggests that they draw a
cathedral together. The narrator fetches a pen and brown paper, and the narrator draws a
cathedral while Robert’s hand rests on his. The narrator’s wife wakes up and is confused by
the activity, but the two keep drawing. Robert tells the narrator to close his eyes and keep
drawing, and doing so precipitates a transformational spiritual experience in the narrator. When
they are done drawing, Robert asks the narrator to open his eyes and admire their work, but
the narrator chooses to keep them closed.

Summary and Analysis

The narrator notes that his wife’s friend, a blind man named Robert, is coming to spend the
night after visiting his late wife’s family in Connecticut. The narrator’s wife hasn’t seen the blind
man (as the narrator refers to him) in ten years, but they’ve kept up their friendship through
mailing audio tapes back and forth. The narrator has never met the blind man, and he doesn’t
want to—the idea of having a blind man in his house bothers him, because blind people in the
movies move slowly and never laugh.
This opening highlights two major features of the narrator’s personality. His reluctance to host
his wife’s good friend for the night shows his jealousy and his discomfort with emotional
intimacy, especially between his wife and another man. The narrator’s stereotype-based
assumptions about Richard — that he will be slow and humorless — show the narrator’s

callousness and distaste for weakness.

The narrator says that his wife met Robert when she worked for him one summer in Seattle.
She was set to marry a man (not the narrator) who was in officers’ training school, and she
needed money so she responded to a “HELP WANTED” ad in the paper and began helping
Robert with his work in the county social service department.
The initial interaction between Robert and the narrator’s wife foreshadows a similar dynamic
between the narrator and Robert later in the story. The narrator’s wife started her friendship
with Robert in an effort to help him, but it becomes clear through the course of the story that it
is often Robert who helps her.

Over the course of the summer, the narrator’s wife and Robert became good friends, and on
her last day at work he asked if he could “see” the narrator’s wife’s face by touching it with his
hands. She agreed and later wrote a poem about the remarkable experience of being “seen”
by a blind man. The narrator comments that his wife was always writing poems after something
important happened to her, but that he “didn’t think much” of this poem when he read it.
Here the narrator betrays his inability to empathize with the emotional experiences of others,
including his own wife. He dismisses her poem outright without even engaging with its
emotional content, showing again how callous and unfeeling he is. His arrogance is highlighted
by the fact that he disparages his wife’s attempts at literary expression even as he himself

makes such an attempt (in the form of a short story).

A year into her first marriage, once the narrator’s wife and her husband had moved away to an
Air Force base, the narrator’s wife called Robert and he asked her to send him a tape telling
him about her life. In the tape, she told him about not liking being married to a military man,
and she and Robert continued to correspond this way for years as she and her husband moved
around the country from base to base.
Robert’s request for an audiotape shows his interest in others’ experiences and inner worlds,
an empathetic sort of “seeing.” The audiotape correspondence puts emphasis on listening and
creating a thoughtful response. Thus, the narrator’s wife finds a degree of emotional intimacy
in her friendship with Robert that she doesn’t have with her husband, the military man, despite
Robert’s distance and his disability.

Finally, feeling lonely from her nomadic lifestyle, the narrator’s wife attempted suicide, though
the pills she took just made her sick instead. She told Robert about this, too, since by then she
told him about most everything—the narrator notes that, aside from writing poems, the tapes
were “her chief means of recreation.”
The narrator’s wife’s reliance on her friendship with Robert is evident here, as it seems that
one of her favorite activities is to exchange audiotapes with him. The suicide attempt shows
her level of emotional distress, while the fact that she seems more stable now demonstrates
the healing and nurturing nature of her friendship with Robert.

Eventually, the narrator’s wife got a divorce and married the narrator, all the while continuing
her audio-tape exchange with Robert. Once, the narrator’s wife asked him if he’d like to hear
a tape where he was mentioned and he agreed, though hearing his name “in the mouth of a
stranger, this blind man I didn’t even know” made him uncomfortable. After a knock at the door,
the narrator never returned to hear what Robert said about him, which he notes is “just as well,”
since he “heard all he wanted to.”
The narrator’s discomfort with emotional intimacy is especially clear here when he betrays his
reluctance to hear an audio tape from Robert. The narrator does not want to hear another
person talking about him, or to fully know the level of emotional intimacy that his wife shares
with Robert. Despite his jealous nature, then, he manages to suppress any curiosity he may

feel.

Before the narrator’s wife goes to the train station to retrieve Robert, the narrator and his wife
quarrel. The narrator makes insensitive jokes about Robert’s blindness, asking his wife if he
should take Robert bowling, a sport dependent on sight. He also asks about the race of
Robert’s recently deceased wife, Beulah. (Beulah and Robert met when Beulah worked for
Robert the summer after the narrator’s wife did.) These remarks infuriate the narrator’s wife
who says: “Are you crazy? Have you just flipped or something?”
This interaction highlights the tension between the narrator and his wife as his jealousy turns
to cruelty. The narrator is attempting to belittle Robert because of his blindness, perhaps
because the narrator feels possessive of his wife and envies her emotional connection with
Robert. The irony here is that he is mocking the man for his disability even as it is this disability
which occasioned the friendship in the first place and allowed the two to develop such a strong
and tender bond.
Active Themes

The narrator then wonders how Beulah must have felt about Robert’s blindness, saying: “I
found myself thinking what a pitiful life this woman must have led.” Presuming that all women,
including Beulah, love compliments on their appearance, the narrator thinks about how hard it
must have been for Beulah that her husband had never been able to see her.
This passage shows the high premium the narrator places on visual perception. He is unable
to comprehend how a woman could feel appreciated by her husband if he cannot see her when
she is wearing a nice outfit. The fact that the narrator does not consider that relationships can
be built on non-visual understanding reflects his own inability to comprehend his wife’s
emotions or to see that what is most important to her is not her appearance but her inner life.

Robert and the narrator’s wife arrive back at the house, and the narrator immediately betrays
his reluctance about having Robert as a guest in his home. To himself, he notes how Robert
wears a full beard, thinking that a blind man having a beard is ridiculous. When his wife
introduces him to Robert, the narrator struggles to return Robert’s conversational niceties.
Robert, however, seems unfazed by this. After they settle in the living room and begin talking,
the narrator cruelly targets Robert’s blindness, asking if he sat on the side of the train with a
view. Robert replies in a cordial manner, talking about how he hadn’t ridden on a train since
he was child.

The narrator is unwilling to engage with Robert in a sincere manner. His internal
comments about Robert’s beard, as well as his pointed question about the train, demonstrate
his discomfort with Robert’s disability. They also show that the narrator wants to dominate
Robert, exercising power conversationally by emphasizing his own ability to see. In fact, the
narrator’s need to make Robert feel inferior only makes his own insecurities painfully apparent.
“Cathedral” page 209-219
 Week 4: “Cathedral”: Setting-Characters-Themes-questions
Title: “Cathedral”: Setting-Characters-Themes-questions
Objective: Identify and analyze the literary elements used by Carver (plot, setting and
characterization) to convey his message.
Instruction: Students should read pages 220-229 of “Cathedral”
Content:

Cathedral Themes

Vision

In “Cathedral,” the lives of a married couple are disrupted when the wife’s blind friend,
Robert, comes to visit. While the husband, who is the story’s narrator, initially believes that
having Robert in the house will be inconvenient and unsettling, he comes to realize that
blindness is not simply a deficit—Robert’s fine-tuned perception adds to the narrator’s own
appreciation of the world.

Initially, the narrator imagines that Robert will be strange.

Empathy and Listening

While the narrator is able to see the physical world, he struggles in his relationship with his
wife. Robert, on the other hand, is blind, but he seems to be quite attuned to the emotional
lives of others because he is an empathetic listener. Carver, therefore, configures empathy
via listening as a mode of perception that is perhaps more intimate than sight.

Intimacy and Isolation

At the story’s start, the narrator is alienated from other people. He and his wife have a tense
relationship and they quarrel before her friend Robert, who is blind, is scheduled to arrive at
their house. In this fight, the narrator’s wife remarks that the narrator has no friends, and this
seems true—he never mentions any, and when Robert arrives at the house, the narrator has
trouble holding a conversation.

The Secular and the Sacred

The tension between the secular and the sacred is an animating force of Raymond Carver’s
“Cathedral,” the very premise of which—a blind man healing a man who can see—inverts a
popular Bible story in which Jesus heals a blind man. Carver’s story often explicitly and
implicitly references religion, which is how many people find meaning in their lives, but
Carver argues that a person does not need religion to find meaning—spirituality can be
secular.

The main theme of “Cathedral” is that human connection occurs in various forms and
degrees. The characters illustrate that people have different ways and abilities to connect
and relate to others; some are more successful than others.

The primary conflict in "Cathedral" is the narrator's interior conflict over his feelings of
loneliness, prejudice, and inferiority.
 Narrator Character Analysis

The protagonist and narrator of Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” is a middle-aged

unnamed man. Through interior monologue, the narrator shows himself to be cynical and
insensitive, especially to the poetry written by his wife. He is jealous of her ex-husband from
her previous marriage, though that marriage was a miserable experience for her, and he is
especially envious of her friendship with a blind man named Robert. At the beginning of the
story, the narrator finds his life banal and somewhat meaningless. He admits to Robert that he
takes no pleasure in his work, saying that he has been at his job for three years, does not like
it, but does not see any other opportunities to earn income. He seems to be fairly dependent
on substances like alcohol and marijuana, which he smokes most nights before going to sleep.
His strained relationship with his wife, his meaningless job, and his substance abuse seem
related to his inability to find joy or meaning in the world, which becomes clearest when he
admits to Robert that he isn’t religious (although it seems like he was raised religious) and
notes that he has a hard time in believing in anything. However, after drawing a grand
European cathedral for Robert, the narrator undergoes a spiritual reawakening, becoming able
to find beauty and meaning in the world by seeing things through Robert’s perspective.

Robert Character Analysis

Robert is a friend of the narrator’s wife who comes to stay at their home after visiting
his recently deceased wife’s family. Since the long-ago summer when the narrator’s wife
worked for Robert (who is a social worker), the narrator’s wife and Robert have exchanged
audio recordings in which they recount their thoughts and experiences. Robert’s unfailing
kindness and empathy, as well as his patience and his ability to listen conscientiously to others,
allow him to form a close friendship with the narrator’s wife, who seems emotionally closer to
Robert than to the narrator, with whom she does not always share her thoughts. For the
narrator’s wife, her friendship with Robert seems unique, but it seems like Robert has a great
many friends he values. He says, for instance, that as an amateur radio operator, he made
friends who come from everywhere from Alaska to Tahiti. The narrator of the story does not
seem like he wants to be Robert’s friend, at least at first. But despite the narrator’s mocking
and exclusion of Robert, Robert remains kind to the narrator and ultimately wins him over,
facilitating the narrator’s spiritual transformation by encouraging him to draw a cathedral.

The Narrator’s Wife Character Analysis

Most of what is known about the narrator’s wife comes from the narrator’s interior
monologue, so it reflects his somewhat warped notions of her and her life. She was married
previously to a military man and became so lonely in that relationship that she attempted to
commit suicide. The attempt was unsuccessful and she soon divorced her first husband. She
later met and married the narrator, whom she seems to love, although she is often frustrated
by his entrenched cynicism and insensitivity. Through all of this, she has maintained a
friendship with Robert, the blind social worker for whom she worked one summer in Seattle.
Exchanging audio tapes with Robert and writing poetry are, according to the narrator, her two
major hobbies. There is a notable difference between the tenor of her relationship with Robert
and her relationship with her husband. With Robert, she does her utmost to be accommodating
and seems to genuinely enjoy his presence. With her husband, however, the narrator’s wife is
standoffish and sometimes even prickly. It seems that the narrator’s inability to understand his
wife’s values and emotions leads to strain in their relationship, whereas the narrator’s wife
feels understood by Robert, who is a good friend and a careful listener.

Raymond Carver's “Cathedral”

Discussion Questions

Bigger Issues:

1.) Is the narrator a sympathetic protagonist? Does our opinion of him change as the story
progresses? Does the narrator develop or change or "grow" over the course of the evening?

2.) What are the primary emotions displayed by the narrator throughout, and how can we
understand them in terms of the life he leads? What are some adjectives you would use to
characterize him? What role does alcohol play in his life?

3.) What is the narrator’s attitude toward his wife? Describe the narrator’s marriage. What
kind of marriage do they have, and what evidence do you find to support your conclusion? Is
the narrator’s jealousy of Robert irrational?

4.) What is it about Robert that unsettles the narrator? What does Robert do to put the
narrator at ease?

5.) How does Robert shatter the narrator’s preconceived notions of blind people? How do his
appearance and bearing resist every stereotypical image the narrator has about blind people,
and why is this so upsetting?

6.) What does the narrator learn from his encounter with Robert? Is the ending convincing?
Do you believe that there will be a significant change in his outlook from this point on?

7.) Contrast the author’s tone and the narrator’s mood at the opening of the story with the
tone and mood at the end. How does the change in style reflect the change that has
occurred in the narrator?

8.) How or why is the cathedral an important image or symbol in the story? What is the
significance of Carver’s choice of a cathedral as catalyst for the narrator’s learning
experience? What added dimension does this symbol bring to our understanding of the
story? Can you tie it to any previous detail?

9.) Describe Carver’s style.

Smaller Issues:

10.) What is important about the two flashbacks (the ones about the narrator's wife's past
and Robert's past)?

11.) Discuss the nickname “Bub.”

12.) Why such a “feeding frenzy” at dinner?

13.) Why the repeated references to Robert lifting his beard?

14.) How does alcohol and marijuana play a role in the story?

15.) Why is it important that the setting is the narrator’s house?

16.) What is important about the references to the narrator's wife's poems and tapes?

Ideas about Themes:

17.) What does Robert “see” over the course of the evening?

18.) In what ways is this story about “seeing” and/or learning?

19.) Discuss “Cathedral” as a story about “the blind leading the blind.”

20.) In what ways is this story about communication and connectedness? (Think about the
poems, the tapes, the ham radio, etc.)

21.) For Carver, salvation lies in human contact and connection. Comment critically.
 Week 5: Caucasia_ Context, Plot_and Characters Pages 5-131
Title: Caucasia Context, Plot and Characters
Objective: Analyze some literary elements in Caucasia de Danzy Senna
Instruction: Read Caucasia by Danzy Senna (Pages 5-131)
Content:

Part 1: Background and historical context

Caucasia is set in 1975 Boston, Massachusetts. Violent protests disrupted the city as forced
desegregation was implemented in public schools beginning in the 1974 school year. Boston
busing desegregation flamed racial tensions, resulting in riots, beatings and violence which
persisted for many years.

Birdie's parents met in January 1963 during the Kennedy administration. They marry and have
their first daughter, Colette/Cole in 1964; Birdie is born in 1967. At that time, there were anti-
miscegenation laws in many US states. These were not overturned until the 1967 Supreme
Court ruling Loving v. Virginia. Within the context of the novel, Birdie's inclination to try to
make herself invisible due to the racial tension she felt in her home positioned her as a "neutered
mutation" within Trey Ellis' concept of the "cultural mulatto".

During this period the strategy for social change through peaceful protests that are associated
with the Civil Rights Movement were being challenged by new African American leaders.
Malcolm X urged a demand for human rights 'by any means necessary. Stokely Carmichael is
credited with the first popular use of term "Black Power" in 1963 at a Civil Rights rally.
Following the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
was created by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton.

Violence was used as a form of protest by groups like Weather Underground, notorious for mail
bombs and bank robberies, and the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), the organization that
kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst in 1974.

Overview
Danzy Senna’s debut coming-of-age novel Caucasia (1998) takes place in Boston, Massachusetts during
the tumultuous Black Power Movement of the 1970s. It is the story of two mixed-race sisters, Birdie
and Cole Lee, who have an African-American father and a white mother. In the beginning of the novel,
Birdie tries to gain acceptance as black to fit in with her social circle and her family’s politics, but when
she and her mother go on the run, she must change her name and pass as white. The novel is in three
parts, and features 17 titled chapters. This guide numbers each section and chapter for clarity and refers
to these numbers throughout.
Part 2: Plot Summary

The book is written in three parts: Part 1 takes place in 1975 Boston and Roxbury,
Massachusetts, when Birdie is eight years old; Part 2 takes place in a small town in New
Hampshire six years later when Birdie is 14 years old; Part 3 takes place when Birdie is 14 ½
years old and runs away from her mother to try to find her father and sister.
Part 1: "Negritude for beginners"

It is 1975 and eight-year-old Birdie Lee lives with her family in Roxbury, Massachusetts. She
and her older sister, Cole, converse in their room using their made-up language, Elemeno. The
pair can hear their Caucasian mother, Sandy and African American father Deck, arguing
downstairs. The confrontation results in Deck moving out for good.

Sandy tells the girls that they will attend a public school, instead of Nkrumah, the private Black
Power School in Boston. They are assigned to two different school districts, "'in the interest of
dahversetty'". Birdie is sent to a predominantly black school in Dorchester, while Cole is sent
to a south Boston Irish school. Sandy dismisses this decision, and the receptionist buses them
both to a school in South Boston. An assault on an African American man by Irish men in the
South school district makes the news and the first day of classes are cancelled. The girls are
sent to the African American power school, after all.

At Nkrumah, Birdie is questioned by the other students wanting to know what race she is; they
ask if she's Puerto Rican and demand: "What you doin' in this school? You white?" With Cole's
sisterly protection, in addition to changing her hair, dress and speech patterns to fit in with the
other African American students, Birdie successfully passes as an African American. Birdie
begins to find kinship with her peers. She meets Maria, a schoolgirl who invites her to go steady
with a certain boy; she agrees. Through this connection, Birdie becomes close friends with a
group of girls who call themselves the Brown Sugars, and her popularity flourishes.

Near the end of the school year, Birdie's parents finally divorce and Deck announces that he is
moving to Brazil with his new girlfriend, Carmen, and taking Cole with him. A traumatized
Birdie is left with her grieving mother. Sandy fears she is wanted by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) (COINTELPRO) for terrorist activities and the two take off. Birdie becomes
Jesse Goldman, a girl with Jewish ancestry. Her mother becomes Sheila Goldman.

Part 2: "From Caucasia with love"

Sandy and Birdie are on the run for four years, in the land of "Caucasia". With fake identities,
they become the widow Sheila Goldman and Jewish, white daughter Jesse Goldman.
Sheila/Sandy is able to find jobs wherever she and Jesse/Birdie go because she plays up her
whiteness and well-educated demeanor. Sandy/Sheila finally decides to settle down in a small
town in New Hampshire, where she and Birdie/Jesse rent out a small cottage maintained by
Walter and Libby Marsh. Birdie/Jesse meets the Marsh's son, fifteen-year-old Nicholas Marsh,
who is home for the summer before heading back to Exeter for school. He makes some romantic
advances towards Birdie.

Sandy meets a Jim Campbell at the bar and a relationship begins to form, much to Birdie's
displeasure. Birdie begins to realize she wants to be identified as African American when
Nicholas calls her "Poca"— a reference to her skin tone in the light. When summer ends,
Nicholas heads back to Exeter and Birdie attends the local public school with the other
"townies". Birdie ends up befriending a clique of white girls by imitating their appearances and
interests. In this school, Birdie notices Samantha Taper, who is also bi-racial, but unlike Birdie,
does not "pass" as Caucasian and is bullied for it.

Birdie finds a postcard from Dot in Sandy's room and realizes she has been in contact with the
family after all. By Christmas, Sandy has told Jim the truth about their true identities, including
Birdie's parentage. Birdie feels betrayed and begins to question if the FBI was ever after her
mother. By the end of this section, she decides to run away from home to Boston and look for
her Aunt Dot, and hopefully find her father and her sister.

Part 3: "Compared to what"

In Boston, Birdie uses the address on the postcard to find Aunt Dot, who now has a daughter,
Taj. Aunt Dot notifies Sandy that Birdie has run away to Boston, but when Sandy and Jim come
to pick her up, she refuses to leave with them. Birdie reconnects with her first boyfriend from
Nkrumah, Ali Parkman, whose father Ronnie was Deck's best friend. She learns from Ronnie
that her own father returned from Brazil and settled in California years earlier. Ronnie provides
her with Deck's most recent phone number and address. While distraught that Deck has not
tried to find her, she commits to going to San Francisco to find Deck and Cole. With financial
help from her white, waspish grandmother, Penelope Lodge, Birdie flies to San Francisco.

In San Francisco, she breaks into Deck's home before he arrives. Upon their reunion, Birdie
finds out he lives alone and although he professes to be glad to see Birdie again, he is
emotionally distant. When the topic of Sandy is broached, he alludes to her flight from the FBI,
confirming Birdie's suspicions that Sandy was in little, if any, danger of being pursued by
COINTELPRO. He eagerly shares his philosophy about race, a project he had been working on
since the Roxbury years, that "... mulattos had historically been the gauge of how poisonous
American race relations were," as part of his "Canaries in the Coal Mine" theory. His
preoccupation with his theories on race over his concern for her through all the years he was
absent from her life causes Birdie to express her anger towards him.

Eventually, Birdie's father takes her to Cole and the sisters reunite after seven years apart. Birdie
gives Cole Sandy's number and the three of them decide they will meet during the summer.
Birdie decides she will remain in San Francisco with Cole and go to school there. The story
ends with Birdie seeing a mixed, African American in a school bus as it drives away from her.

Characters

 Birdie Lee
 Jesse (Jess) Goldman
 Colette (Cole) Lee
 Sandy Lodge Lee
 Sheila Goldman
 Deck Lee
 Dot Lee
 Carmen
 Penelope Lodge
 Walter and Libby Marsh
 Nicholas Marsh
 Jim:
 Samantha Taper:
Caucasia, Danzy Senna
PLOT
Birdie and Cole are American multiracial sisters who are separated in life because of
their differing appearances and the racial identities which people ascribe to them. The
narrator of the novel, Birdie, is at first not classified by appearance. Her sister Cole is
described as "cinnamon-skinned, curly haired", traits associated with African
Americans of mixed race. Senna hints that the girls' mother is European American (her
belly is called a "pale balloon").
Over time, race, as experienced by the girls in their society, creates a rift between their
lives. As young girls, Birdie and Cole speak an indistinguishable language of their
creation which they call "Elemeno". The closeness between the two sisters suggests
that appearance is not a defining characteristic of personality or behavior. Senna offers
culture and atmosphere as having the most profound effect on a child's development.
Birdie especially struggles to identify with and reconcile her multiracial identity. At the
end of the novel, the two sisters are reunited in Berkeley.
The two sisters are separated when their father decides to leave for Brazil in search of
a more racially harmonious society and their mother flees their home in fear that she
is in trouble with the FBI. Each parent takes the child who is closer to him or her in
appearance, Cole leaving with her father and his new girlfriend and Birdie leaving with
her mother. In order to avoid being caught, Birdie and her mother assume false
identities; Birdie´s mother forces her to change her name to Jesse Goldman and
pretend to be a Jewish girl. Birdie and her mother remain on the lam for several years,
but even as time passes Birdie is unable to fully adopt this new identity. She cannot
forget her sister, her father, or her the race that she truly is. She hopes for the day
when her family will be reunited and she can drop the facade.
Meanwhile, Cole, with her darker skin and thicker hair, has been passing as black with
their father. Once Birdie comes to realize that she may never be reunited with them
unless she takes it upon herself, she leaves her mother to find them.
Before meeting with Cole again, Birdie reunites with her father, whom she is angry
with. She cannot understand why racial appearance has caused division in her family.
Birdie says to her father, "I heard myself say, 'Fuck the canaries in the fucking coal
mines. You left me. You left me with Mum, knowing she was going to disappear. Why
did you only take Cole? Why didn't you take me? If race is so make-believe, why did I
go with Mum? You gave me to Mum 'cause I looked white. You don't think that's real?
Those are the facts." (336)
Birdie was long made to believe that there was some logical reason behind the splitting
of her family. In her immaturity, she was led to think that her passing as someone else
and constant displacement were for a greater cause and that her family would
eventually be reunited. Birdie’s inability to understand and lashing out against her
parents in the end shows she has successfully come of age. After years of struggling
to maintain some sense of who she was while having to cover it up in different ways
based on her environment, she grew to recognize the ridiculousness of her
circumstances. She no longer sees her parents for what she grew up envisioning them
as. She is angry that something so shallow could have such deep repercussions for
her family and herself. She cannot make sense of her father's lack of effort in planning
a return to her. An irony exists in her father’s working so hard at writing about race
while working so little at forming a relationship with his mulatto daughter based on her
racial appearance. Birdie comes to understand that there is nothing to understand
about the actions of her mother and father. The way in which skin color has ruined her
childhood and the fact that her parents allowed it to is too senseless for her to ever
make sense of it. Through this coming of age novel, Birdie grows to understand the
ridiculousness in accepting appearance as a determining characteristic of
performance.
Rewriting the Passing Novel: Danzy Senna's
Caucasia
Kathryn Rummell
The Griot; Fall 2007; 26, 2; ProQuest Direct Complete
pg. 1
the passing Novel: Danzy Senna's Caucasia
Kathryn Rummell
passing (here, signifying African
Americans passing fOr whites) has long
been a fixture of the American social
landscape. Passers have masqueraded
fOr a variety of reasons, the most com­
mon being to flee from slavery, to
Improve their economic sItuation, and
of course to escape racism. The prac­
tice of passing, accordIng to Werner
Sollors In Neither Black Nor WhIte, Yet
Both, reached the heIght of Its popular­
Ity from the nineteenth through the
middle of the twentieth century
(Sollors 247), and the majority of narra­
tives of passing were written during
this era. These narratives were espe­
cially popular during the Harlem
Renaissance, when writers such as
Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, and James
Weldon Johnson employed the motif of
passing to explore the psychological,
emotional, and Intellectual dilemmas
Involved In passing fOr white. NovelS of
passing typically share several charac­
teristics: Interracial sex, fear of discov­
ery, feelings of guilt and betrayal, and
the struggle to find and claim an Identi­
ty. perhaps because of the Renais­
sance's emphasis on racial pride and
solidarity, these novels of passing often
Indict the passers, portraying them as
so-called tragic mUlattoes or racial sell­
outs. For Instance, Clare Kendryfalls (or
Is pushed) to her death at the end of
Larsen's PassIng, and Johnson'S
unnamed narrator In AutobIography Of
an Ex-Coloured Man wonders If by pass­
Ing he "sold [his] birthrIght fOr a mess
of pottage" (211). These portrayals
highlight the raclallzed social structure
of the early twentIeth century: mixed­
race Individuals often felt trapped In a
society that recognized only two racIal
IdentitIes: White and black.
The usually-tragic ends of these
characters, however, do little to chal­
lenge that social structure; these
mixed-race characters are viewed by
others. and seem to view themselves,
as "really" black. Samlra Kawash argues
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
that this notion has been the "common
understanding" of passing: "The one
who passes Is...really, Indisputably
black; but the deceptive appearance of
the body permits such a one access to
the exclusive opportunities of white­
ness" (1261. The narrator In Johnson's
EX-Coloured Man, fOr Instance, after
divulging the "truth" to his beloved,
confesses: "This was the only time In my
life that I ever felt absolute regret at
being coloured, that I cursed the drops
of African blood In my veins and wished
that I were really white" (205; emphases
mIne). More subtly, In Passing, Irene
Redfield laments her loyalty to the
black race, which In her mind Includes
Clare: "That Instinctive loyalty to a race.
Why COUldn't she get free of It? Why
should It Include Clare? ..What she felt
was not so much resentment as a dull
despair because she could not change
herself In this respect, coUld not sepa­
rate Individuals from the race, herself
from Clare Kendry" (100). To Irene, and
to the other characters In the novel,
Clare Is "really" black and sImply "pass­
Ing" fOr white. Thus, these novels rein­
fOrce the one-drop rule of blackness as
well as the notIon of "blackness" Itself.
And, while the novels may argue that
IndIviduals should be able to choose
their racial Identity, they nonetheless
reduce the choices to whiteness or
blackness.
More recent novels of passing,
however, have seemingly moved
beyond this either/or racial binary and
have worked to promote a differently
configured racial Identity. one such
narrative Is Danzy Senna's 1998 debut
novel, Caucasla, whiCh rewrites the tra­
ditional passIng narrative to reflect a
late twentieth-century perspective on
racial Identity. Caucasla chronicles the
childhood and adolescence Of Birdie
Lee, the product of a 1970'S biracial
marriage. Birdie'S father, Deck, Is a
black Intellectual WhO believes rhetoric
can win the war against racism. Sandy,
 white mother, takes a more radical
approach, fighting violence with vio­
lence. Birdie and her older sister Cole
are caught In the middle, suspended
between action and words, whiteness
and blackness. Birdie physically favors
her mother's side Of the family (Boston
bluebloods who can trace their ances­
try back to Cotton Mather), while Cole Is
decidedly darker-skinned. When black­
power pOlitics split up their parents,
Cole follows her father and his new
black girlfriend to Brazil, and Birdie dis­
appears underground with her mother,
who Is running from the law. Through­
out the novel, Birdie struggles to define
her racial self In a world that seems to
offer only two choices: blackness or
Whiteness. In Boston, she studies how
to be black like her sister; In New
Hampshire With her mother, she learns
Whiteness from her friend Mona. Only
when she Is at Aurora, a women's com­
mune, Is Birdie able to escape racial cat­
egorization, but her time at Aurora Is
short. For most Of her young life, Birdie
Is, to borrow from Werner Sollors, "nei­
ther black nor white yet both"; she has
no solid fOOting on either side Of the
color line, and must learn to negotiate
this line carefully In order ultimately to
forge an IdentItY that Is neither black
nor White. In this way, Caucasla differs
slgnlflcantly from earlier novels Of pass­
Ing.
Senna accomplishes the revision Of
the passing narrative by refusing the
racial binary that earlier narratives Insist
on, thereby rejecting the notion that
Identity can be reduced to one position
within a stable raCial binary. Indeed,
theories Of difference that depend on
the traditional either/or racial model
pose slgnlflcant prOblems for Individu­
als like Birdie. Even multicultUral theo­
ry falls to address adeQuately the Issues
Birdie faces: though It extends racial
categories to Include more than just
"black" and "white: multiculturalism
nonetheless foregrounds race by
assigning Identity on the basis of
ethno-raclal criteria. Hence, multiCUl­
turalism stili operates under the
assumption that there are mutually
exclusive (and Interdependent) defini­
tions Of race. But for an Individual like
Birdie. such definitions reQuire that she
negate a part Of herself, and by the end
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Of the novel, Birdie refuses this nega­
tion. Instead, she embraces what David
A. Hollinger calls a "postethnlc" per­
spective. Postethnlc theory works
against multicultural theory In that the
former recognizes and celebrates mUl­
tiple Identities (which Hollinger terms
"affiliations" to Indicate their voluntary,
not prescribed, nature). These affilia­
tions, however, are not limited by stable
ethno-raclal boundaries. postethnlclty
proffers that IndIVIduals may occupy
and claim multiple affiliations at once
(106). Hollinger elaborates:
A postethnlc perspective
recognizes that most Indi­
viduals live In many circles
simultaneously and that the
actual living Of any Individual
life entails a shifting division
Of labor between the several
"we's" Of which the IndIVId­
ual Is a part. HOW much
weight at what particular
moments Is assigned to the
fact that one Is pennsylvania
Dutch or Navajo relative to
the weight assigned to the
fact that one Is also an
American, a lawyer, a woman,
a Republican, a Baptist, and a
resident of Minneapolis? It Is
this process Of consciously
and critically locating oneself
amid these layers Of "we'S"
that most clearly distinguiSh­
es the postethnlc from the
un-reconstructed universal­
Ist. (106)
Hollinger Is not arguing that
boundaries and groups do not eXist; on
the contrary, he affirms their very real
presence In our lived world. But he
advocates an appreciation for multiple
affiliations, and more Importantly, the
ability for the Individual (rather than
the group) to emphaslze-or de­
emphasize-these affiliations at Will.
Thus, postethnlclty Is a productive lens
through which to view Senna's novel Of
passing. Throughout the novel, Birdie
moves through numerous "circles" and,
as she does so, constantly shIftS her
affiliations. For Instance, unlike earlier
passing characters, Birdie passes for
both White and black, undercutting the
 that she Is "really" black (or
"really" white, for that matterl.
Additionally, the novel adheres to what
feminist scholar Klmberle Crenshaw
refers to as "IntersectlonalltY: the Idea
that racial Identity Is part of a larger,
Intertwined complex of Identity slgnl­
flers, slgnlflers which Include both gen­
der and sexual Identity. Because of this
complex and sophisticated approach to
Identity, Birdie's experiences of racial
passing cannot be separated from her
gender and sexual Identities; she does
not pass for 'whlte," for Instance, but
rather for "White, heterosexual girl."
The pairing and tripling of Identi­
ties Is not new to passing studies, of
course; Elaine Ginsberg writes that gen­
der and racial Identities have 'a dual
aspect" (2), and Juda Bennett argues
that 'passlng Is possible because defini­
tions of race and sex rely on faulty blna­
rlsms" (113). Indeed, by drawing on ear­
lier passing narratives' connections
between race, gender, and sexuality,
Senna moves toward a postethnlc per­
spective by demonstrating the multiple
affiliations-racial, gendered, and sexu­
al-that Birdie adOpts. Ultimately, Bir­
die chooses "mlxed"ness at the end of
the novel (413), and In doing so rejects
the Imposed, deflnltlonally-dependent
Identity binaries that characterize both
racial and sexual Identity. WIthout sta·
ble binaries, passing narratives them­
selVes cannot fUnction, because pass­
Ing Is always structurally dependent on
a stable and defining opposite. The
deconstruction of these multiple bina­
ries and Birdie's rejection of traditional
racial categories mark Caucasla as a
postethnlc work, and Illustrate the
ways that the novel undoes the passing
narrative Itself by reading the genre
against Itself.
Passing for Black
caucasla's most striking departure
from the traditional passing narrative Is
In Birdie's "double" passing-before
passing for white, she passes for black.
other critics have gestured towards
Birdie's passing for black, but none has
fUlly explored It. Brenda Boudreau, for
Instance, discusses Birdie's "pretend­
Ing" to be black (62), and Sika Alaine
Dagbovle writes that Birdie 'also passes
for something she Is and Is not (black)"
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
(105). Yet neither of these scholars
Interrogates the notion of passing for
black: how can one pass for something
one supposedly IS? Reading through
the lens of earlier passing narratives,
the question becomes: How can Birdie
pass for White and also pass for black?
As Elaine Ginsberg maintains, "the pos­
sibility of passing challenges a number
of problematic and even antithetical
assumptions about Identities, the first
of which Is that some Identity cate­
gories are Inherent and unalterable
essences: presumably one cannot pass
for something one Is not unless there Is
some other, pre-passing, Identity that
one Is" (4). Birdie's ability to pass for
black and White, then, pOses even more
significant problems for Identity,
because by passing for both, she Is In
effect claiming neither. Such double
passing enables senna to explode the
myth of the racial binary that organized
earlier passing narratives, and to open
readers' eyes to a more complicated
racial Identity that Is only possible In a
postethnlc world. Or, phrased another
way, the double passing In this novel
'has the pOtential to create a space for
creative self·determination and agency:
the opportunity to construct new Iden­
tities, to experiment With multiple SUb­
ject positions" (Ginsberg 16l. We might
think of these "multiple subject posi­
tions" as synonymous with Hollinger'S
postethnlc "affiliations" as we consider
how Birdie passes for black.
Birdie's passing for black reverses
the usual passing dynamic: though she
looks White, she conVinces her Nkru­
mah schoolmates that she Is black sole­
ly through her performance of black­
ness. In earlier studies, critics applied
Judith Butler'S theory of the performa­
tlvlty of gender to racial Identity; Elaine
Ginsberg and cayle wald are among
those who Incorporate this theory Into
their examinations of passing. Bou­
dreau, writing about Caucasla, also
points out the performatlve nature of
race In this novel (61). However, these
critics are discussing characters who
pass for White, not for black. None-the­
less, In their discussions, skin color Is
the visible sign that makes the per­
formance believable. When Birdie pass­
es for black, though, the oppOsite Is
true: her White skin color works against
 consequently, her performance
must be so convincing that It trumps
the visible; she must perform well
enough for spectators to stop believing
their own eyes, which contributes to
the novel's deconstruction of stable
race categories.
Birdie's passing for black differs
from traditional passing In other ways,
as well. From her first day at Nkrumah,
Birdie realizes that she has to convince
her classmates that she belongs at the
Black Power school. Her decision to
pass for black Is motivated not only by
her desire to fit In With her peers, but
also by her desire not to "lose IColel for
goOd" (62). In this respect, Birdie Is
passing for black In order to keep her
"black" family ICole), rather than pass­
Ing for white and having to reject that
family. Additionally, while many tradi­
tional passers did so In order to Im­
prove their economic situation, Birdie
actually fantasizes that her economic
situation Is deteriorating: while at her
friend Marla's house, Birdie Imagines
that her "mother worked the late shift
and Iher) daddy stole TVS" (71). Here,
Senna links the economics of passing to
color, but her reversal of the usual pat­
tern lpasslng from lower-class black­
ness Into upper-class whiteness)
deconstructs racial categortes fUrther.
A defining moment for Birdie
comes In her first class at her new
school. Her teacher explains, "at the
end of each class, everyone stands and
says, 'Black Is beautiful.' Loud and clear"
(44). But when Birdie'S turn comes, she
only manages to question, "Black Is
beautiful?" 1451. Immediately after­
wards, a student confirms Birdie'S
Whiteness by taunting, "Ouess you must
be ugly" 1451. Birdie'S external "White"
features, especially her "long, stringy
hair" (46), cause her schoolmates to tor­
ture her before Cole threatens them:
"Birdie Isn't white. She'S black. Just like
me. So don't be messing with her again
or I'll cut Off all your hair for real this
time" (48). And though Cole asserts
Birdie'S blackness, the text suggests
that the real reason the girls subse­
quently leave Birdie alone has more to
do With Cole's bOdily threat than her
assertion of Birdie'S race. After all, the
girls Ignore Birdie afterwards; they
don't Include her In their group.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
passing for blaCk constitutes
Birdie'S ticket to survival at Nkrumah
just as passing for White served as a
survival mechanism for earlier passers.
Because Birdie looks White, though, she
has to demonstrate her "blackness" In
other ways In order to be accepted by
her peers. For Instance, when Cole tells
her, "we talk like White glrls...We don't
talk like black people" (53), Birdie
decides to teach herself black speech.
Thus language becomes the first way of
performing blackness, and we see
Birdie practicing saying "nlgga" rather
than "nigger" In front of her bathroom
mirror (63). Significantly, Cole also has
to "learn" blackness to an extent, even
though she Is more visibly black than
Birdie. Boudreau maintains that Cole's
"attempts to 'become' black are...con­
nected to Visibility" much like Birdie's
are (63). Cole's ashy knees and her too­
nappy hair Inspire laughter from the
other children, so she learns to apply
lotion and goes to a black hair salon for
cornrows ISS). But there Is a difference
between Cole and Birdie here: cole's
darker body Identifies her as black In a
way that Birdie'S doesn't. Cole Is not
passing for black; Instead, she Is In a
sense enhancing her blackness. She
merely needs to learn "tricks of the
blackness trade"-a generous dose of
lotion on specific "trouble spots" 1491­
In order to be accepted as black. Cole's
need to "learn" blackness comes not
from a tOO-White physical body, but
from a white·Inflected cultural up­
brtnglng. As she tells her father, "MUm
doesn't know anything about raising a
black child" (53). Telllngly, nobody In
the family refers to Birdie In a similar
statement, just as nobody doubts
cole'S blackness. Birdie describes Cole
as Deck's "young, gifted, and black"
"prodigy" 155), the "proof that his
blackness hadn't been completely
blanched...that his body stili held the
power to leave Its mark" (56). When
she Is With Cole and her father, Birdie
understands that she simply "dlsap·
peared" (56) because of her not-black­
enough body. Ultimately, Cole'S black
body legitimizes her attempts to learn
blackness and renders her "perform­
ance" of blackness somehow more
authentic, at least In the minds of her
family and schOolmates.
 almost-white body, though,
means that she needs more than just
Jergen's to pass fOr black. In a desper­
ate attempt to "blend In" (621, Birdie
sports tight braids to hide her halr's
straight, smooth texture; wears gold
hoops In her ears; and updates her
wardrobe to Include "Sergio valente
jeans, a pink vest, a jean jacket with
sparkles on the collar, and spanking­
white Nlke sneakers" (631. These acces­
sories, along with her mastery of
"black" speech, finally earn her notice
from her peers. As BIrdIe reports, her
"work paid off" (631-and the word
"work" Indicates the constructedness
Of the actiVity. Birdie does not label this
process Of transfOrmation as passing,
but Instead calls It "the art Of changing"
(621, which further highlights the per­
fOrmatlvlty Inherent In Birdie's Identity.
She ascribes her success at changing to
her early days Of playing dress-up with
Cole: "Cole and I had gotten a thrill out
of changIng-spending our days
dressed In old costumes, pretending to
be queens Of our make-believe nation.
But only at Nkrumah did It become
more than a game" (621. While acknowl­
edging that It Is "more than a game,"
Birdie nonetheless compares her current
performance Of blackness to her child­
hood performances Of make-believe.
Thus Senna Interrogates the category Of
blackness: by Implying that It Is nothing
more than make-believe, a costume to
be donned and dOffed at Will, she sug­
gests that the category IS empty at Its
core. Birdie does not share an Ineffable
"blackness" with earlier passers, because
Senna shOWS us that blackness, like
Whiteness, can (or even mustl be fabri­
cated at will and with great effort.
BirdIe's "success" at passing fOr
black Is confirmed when Marla, the
bully who threatened Birdie on her first
day at Nkrumah, takes Birdie under her
wing. Having noticed Birdie's changes,
Marla asks, "So, you black?" (631. When
BIrdie "nodls), slowly, as If unsure Of It"
(631, Marla willingly brings her Into the
fOld: "I got a brother just like you" (631.
Marla's Identification Of Birdie with her
"Cape Verdean" brother not only marks
Birdie as black, but also Includes Birdie
In a symbolic "black" family, one where
she visually resembles a sibling. Marla's
acceptance Of Birdie (Birdie has been
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
"knighted black by Marla" (6411 does not
mean, however, that she Ignores
Birdie'S visible Whiteness. on the con­
trary, Marla sees the visible differences
and tries to help Birdie minimize them:
"we're gonna have to do something
about your hair" (691, she tells Birdie,
and then proceeds to cut and curl It.
When Birdie sees her curly hair In the
mirror, she Is better able to see herself
as black; she Imagines that Marla Is her
cousin, her own name Is Yolanda, and
she Is Cape Verdean (691. This Imaginary
IdentificatIon With Maria'S ethnic back­
ground Is significant because It IndI­
cates that despite her efforts to the
contrary, Birdie recognizes that her
blackness Is simply "Imagined" (691.
That Is, she Is passing here-this
evening wIth Marla Is just another game
Of make-believe.
Birdie'S response to her successful
passing echoes that of earlier passers'
In Its anxIety; she confesses, "But I
never lost the anxlety...a fear that at
any moment I would be told It was all a
bIg joke" (641. Most passers fear dIscov­
ery, fear being "fOund out." Senna,
though, rewrites the passing narrative
by turning this fear upside-down: while
traditional passers fear their exposure
as "really" black, Birdie fears being
exposed as white. The consequences
Of exposure fOr earlier passers are dire,
and Often point to the stereotype of
the tragic mUlatta. Rena walden, fOr
example, from Chesnutt's House
Behind the Cedars, Is abandoned by her
white flanc~e and eventually dies from
the emotional stress and guilt Of pass­
Ing. In larsen'S passing, Clare Kendry
falls to her death when her White hUS­
band discovers her racial secret. In
each case, and In virtually all passing
narratives, exposure Of the character's
blackness culminates In the loss Of fam­
Ily (and Often Of life Itself). For Birdie,
the consequence of being "exposed" as
White Is equally severe. Despite her
persIstent effOrts to pass fOr black,
Birdie eventually loses part of her fami­
ly when Deck chooses Cole, not Birdie,
to accompany him to BraZil.
Senna rewrites the passing narra·
tlve In an IronIc way. Usually the Visibil­
Ity Of a passer's Whiteness Is an asset
eventually betrayed by some evidence
Of the one-drop rule (getting "caught"
 one's darker-skinned family, as
Rena walden does, for Instance). But In
Birdie's case, just the opposite Is true.
Her parents reject the one·drop rule In
favor Of the visibility rule: Birdie looks
white, and therefore Is white; Cole
looks black, and therefore Is black.
When Deck chooses Cole over Birdie,
Senna reverses the usual passing
dynamic; here, the black family rejects
the "white" relatIVe, rather than the
white family rejecting the black one.
That senna consistently undercuts the
traditional passing narrative by revers­
Ing the raCial positions Illustrates her
desire to challenge the myth Of the
racial binary, and we see her continuing
this challenge when Birdie successIVely
passes for white.
Though Birdie Is too young at
Nkrumah to have much Of a sexual
Identity, the novel does suggest the
Intersectlonallty Of race and sexuality
here. For Instance, one factor that
helps Birdie become accepted as black
Is All's desire for her. Since All was the
student Who most viciously accused
Birdie Of Whiteness, his desire to date
her-hls pronouncement that She Is
"pretty" (64l-lndlcates his acceptance
Of her blackness. This desire earns
Birdie an Invitation to Join the Brown
Sugars, a group of girls who have
bOYfriends (64). On a subseQuent Sleep­
over at Maria'S house, Birdie not only
gets a makeover' (which Includes beau­
ty tricks to make her appear more
black), but also experiences sexual
desire for the first time. The two girls
take a bath together, and Birdie "stud­
Ied Maria'S nude body," noting her
"small perfectly shaped nipples like
Hershey'S Kisses· (70). AS they dry off,
Birdie "looked out Of the comer Of my
eye at the soft brown slope Of her body.
I felt ashamed for looking, and hid my
face In the wet tangle Of my hair" (71).
Maria'S black, sexualized body, and the
hint Of homoerotic desire It Inspires, Is
at once a source Of envy, desire, and
shame for Birdie. Not sure how to
respond to her desire, Birdie masks It
and her shame with her hair, the mark
Of her Whiteness, as If she's hoping that
her visible race will hide her homoerot­
Ic desire. This cOnflatlon Of Whiteness
with heterosexuality will surface later
In the novel, but at the moment Birdie
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
senses that race and sexuality cannot
be separated. At this juncture, the
novel accommodates a postethnlc per·
spectlve, because It collapses the artlfl·
Clal boundaries between these con·
structed categories.
Passing fOr White
Soon after Birdie begins to pass
successfully as black at school, her
father takes Cole to Brazil and sandy'S
radical activities cause her to run from
the law, taking Birdie with her. For the
next several years Of her life, and for
the majority Of the novel, Birdie passes
for White. A key difference between
Caucasla and earlier passing narratives,
though, Is the age Of the passer. In
most narratives, the character who
passes Is an adult, and as such has at
least a limited understanding Of the
supposed benefits and conseQuences
of passing. For example, the narrator
In Johnson's EX·Coloured Man crosses
the color line multiple times as an adult,
and realizes what he Is gaining and giv­
Ing up by doing so. Similarly, In passing
Clare Kendry chooses to pass once
she'S old enough to marry, hoping to
escape an oppressive household and
gain economic status and security. In
both Of these cases, and In numerous
others, the adult Individual chooses to
pass based on his or her own experi­
ences. Senna's Birdie, on the other
hand, Is a child Of eight when she first
passes for White. She has no choice In
the matter, especially since her mother
tells her that passing Is the only way to
save both Of their lives: "The FBI would
be looking for a white woman on the
lam With her black child. But the fact
that I could pass, she explained, with
my straight hair, pale skin, my general
phenotypic resemblance to the
CaucaSOid race, would throw them Off
our trall...MY bodY was the key to our
going Incognito" (1281. Four years later,
once they have settled In New
Hampshire, sandy warns Birdie that the
danger Of exposure Is stili present:
"when are you going to understand
that this Isn't a game?" (1651. Birdie's
passing ensures her mother'S freedom
as much as It does her own. The threat
Of exposure, common In passing narra­
tives, Is doubled for Birdie, and
reversed from earlier narratives:
 usually the parent avoids his
or her exposure for the sake Of the
child (as In the Ex-Coloured Man, for
examplel, here the child dodges expo­
sure for the sake Of the parent. Hence
Birdie's "choice" to pass for white Is not
really a choice at all, and the responsi­
bility for her mother'S safety marks her
as distinctively different from earlier lit­
erary passers.
Not only Is Birdie denied the choice
to pass, but she Is also denied the
opportunity to create her own "White"
Identity. Instead her mother chooses
everything, from her new name to her
genetic and racial background. sandy
christens Birdie "Jesse," after sandy'S
great-grandmother, a suffragette; this
name connects Birdie not only With
Whiteness, but also with her mother's
racist ancestors (1281. Such renaming
links Caucasla to earlier passing narra­
tives, In which characters changed their
names to ensure anonymity (Johnson's
EX-Coloured Man, for Instancel.
When sandy ponders Birdie's racial
history, she looks at her daughter and
says, almost enviously, "You've got a lot
Of choices, babe. You can be anything.
Puerto Rican, Sicilian, Pakistani, Oreek. I
mean, anything, really" (1301. But as
Quickly as she Invests Birdie with this
power Of choice, she takes It away;
Birdie suggests Italian, but Sandy Inter­
rupts: "Jewish Is better, I think: and
Birdie realizes that "the decision had
been made" (1301. Once again, the
peculiar dynamic of Birdie's youth and
Sandy'S status as mother renders Birdie
powerless In her own self-definition
and, as Boudreau attests, Birdie Is
"stripped Of the agency to define her­
self" 1641. The lack of such agency high­
lights the way Birdie's racial Identity Is
constructed from without rather than
chosen from within at this point In the
novel. In this way, senna connects
Birdie to earlier passers like Clare
Kendry, whom Cheryl Wall argues SUf­
fers from "the Impossibility Of self-defi­
nition" 1981. Unlike these passers, how­
ever, Birdie will eventually break free Of
the restrictive categories In order to
claim her own self-definition.
sandy creates an entire family his­
tory for Birdie, complete With a Jewish
classicist father Iremlnlscent Of sandy'S
own fatherl who had "an afro, the way
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Jews have sometimes" and for whom
"Judaism was more like a cultural thing"
(1311. As Lori Harrison-Kahan argues, In
choosing Jewlshness Senna makes
another Important change to the tradi­
tional passing narrative, because
"whiteness Is not represented as a
monolithic category" 121. Birdie Is not
just White, but a particular kind Of
White, and one that Is convenient for a
young girl who Is passing because
Jewlshness can be a "cultural thing"
that Jews can choose to embrace or
not. That Is, Birdie can explain her
slightly darker hue with the genetic
marker Of Jewlshness, but does not
have to bone up on rabbinical law
because she can reject the cultural/reli­
gious aspect Of her new "race: This
form Of passing Is Ingenious. One can
be a non-practicing Jew, but what does
It mean to be a non-practicing black?
Birdie's performance Of Whiteness
also resembles her performance Of
blackness because, In each case, the
performance Of race Is tied to gender
and sexuality. Much as she passes for
black and White, Birdie also passes for
female and heterosexual. For Instance,
when she enters school In New
Hampshire, she spies a group Of girls
and sees "In their reflections the girl I
failed to be" 12191, "a girl who dressed In
oversized tomboy clothes" 12201. once
she makes friends In the New
Hampshire town, she seizes the oppor­
tunity to make up for lost time: "I was
playing catch-Up With Mona, learning
how to be a girl" 12271. Birdie's lan­
guage here supports Butler'S theory Of
the peformatlvlty Of gender In Its sug­
gestion that gender Identity Is some­
thing to be learned, a way Of doing that
becomes a way Of being. It also Indi­
cates that there are several kinds Of
"girl," just as there are several kinds Of
skin color and racial Identities. Birdie'S
language connects her gender "pass­
Ing" to her racial passing: "I was usually
performing: she confesses; "It must
have looked like I was changing Into
one Of those New Hampshire girls"
(2331. Oender and racial passing are not
merely parallel; they are Intimately
Intertwined. Boudreau traces this Idea
In Caucasla, affirming that racial Identity
"cannot be separated from gender"
1651.
 sexual, and gender Identi­
ties collide In Birdie's first sexual
encounter with Nick, her white New
Hampshire neighbor. Nick relates the
story Of his loss Of virginity to a black
prostitute In Amsterdam by pairing
racial and sexual commodification and
exploitation. He "bought" a black pros­
titute because white ones "cost more
than we had" and because he "heard
that black girls were supposed to be
gOOd" (199). He thus welds together
race, gender, and sexuality as markers
Of Identity that can't be separated,
despite his attempts to "lclose hlsl
eyes" and "forget about It" (200).
Shortly after this confession, Nick licks
Birdie's face and laughingly tells her,
"You have a mustache" (200l. On the
one hand, Nick's remark about her mus­
tache Identifies Birdie as maSCUline, and
thus not sexually desirable. Later, how­
ever, he Invests this mustache With
racial meaning, adding: "It makes you
look dirty, like I could lick you clean"
(200). Whiteness here can "clean" away
faint traces Of darkness or blackness,
somewhat like closing one's eyes can
make blackness disappear; If Birdie's
mustache were removed, she would
become both white and female.
Further, the process Of moving from
black to White through licking Is a sexu­
alone In this Instance, drawing the
moment Of sexuality towards the
moment Of racial and gender IdentItY.
Nick's confession Of his first sexual
experience prompts Birdie to remem­
ber her own, and this Juxtaposition
demarcates the ways In which racial,
gender, and sexual ambiguity underpin
Birdie'S erotic life-an opposite
response to Nick's, In which Identity
stability seems to be a prereQuisite for
pleasure. Nick asks Birdie, "Are you stili
a virgin, or What?" (198). This Question
calls forth the following memory for
Birdie:
I had done some strange
things With Alexis at Aurora.
Some nights, on the mat­
tress we shared, I had strad­
dled her In a game we called
"honeymoon." She would
say, "You be the guy, and I'll
be the girl. Pretend you
have to hold me down.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
pretend you're the boss:
And I would hold her down
and rub my body against
hers, my face hot and moIst
In the crook Of her neck,
while I felt a sharp pleasure
that turned to melting
between my legs. (198-99)
In these pre-adolescent sexual
experiments, Birdie Is clearly acting the
"guy's" part; she Is on top, the "boss:
while the "girl" Alexis Is on bottom. The
notion Of acting underscores the per­
formative nature Of gender and sex
roles, and we see here that biological
sex does not necessarily determine
these rOles. Although Birdie and Alexis
Invent a heterosexual framework to
organize their same-sex encounter,
Birdie'S confUsion about her role In this
experience Is evident In her descrip­
tion: these games were "strange
things."
This confusion also appears earlier
In the novel as Birdie describes the
story she wrote about Richie, a
Mexican-American rebel-wlthout-a­
cause. She confesses that she was "In
love with Richie and dreamed Of him
each night: but she also dreams about
"his sexy, abused girlfriend" (172).
Gender and sexual Indeterminacies
abound as Birdie relates her sexual fan­
tasies about this couple: "It wasn't clear
to me which one Of them I was sup­
posed to be Identifying With-the burly,
macho Richie, who lay on top, or his
sOft, ultrafemlnlne girlfriend With the
pink lipstick and matching toenails,
who lay on bottom" (172). The binary Of
sexual Identity Implodes here, as Birdie
fantasizes about sex With and as both
genders. With Alexis, however, It Is the
masculine role that Birdie performs,
and her response to her "honeymoon"
games With Alexis demonstrates the
anxiety she feels: "Afterward I always
felt a little bit nauseous and would pre­
tend to be asleep so she WOUldn't talk
to me" (199). The text Is unclear about
the source Of this nausea. While It
might stem from the someWhat usual
embarrassment Of first sexual experi­
ences, It seems more likely to stem
from Birdie's anxiety over a same-sex
sexual experience, especially If we
remember her earlier shame when
 Maria's body. Fantasies are one
thing, but lived reality Is another, even
In an environment where same-sex
relationships are the norm.
This shame manifests Itself again In
the text when Birdie denies to Nick the
Importance Of her relationship with
Alexis. In answer to his question, she
replies, "Yeah, I'm a virgin" (199). Her
response Indicates that Birdie does not
fully understand her "strange" experi­
ence With Alexis, but nonetheless
knows that It conflicts With the hetero·
sexual norm she sees In the world out­
side Of Aurora. Later, In Nick's room, he
compliments her kissing technique and
asks, "Where'd you learn to do that?"
(203). Birdie "picked up the Tlntln comic
that had fallen on the floor, and hid
Iher) face behind It as (she) said. 'WIth
this friend Of mine, Alex. We used to
make out all the time'" (203·04). In an
attempt to "normalize" her sexual
experience, Birdie shortens AlexiS'S
name to mask her gender (nowhere
else In the novel does Birdie refer to
Alexis by this nickname>. This scene,
too, functions as a kind Of passing. In
shortening Alexls's name, Birdie masks
her as a boy, and passes the moment Of
homoerotic desire Into heterosexual
desire, much like the "honeymoon"
game. This scene echOes the earlier
one With Marla, too, because here
Birdie hides behind a "raced" comic
book-Tlntln /n the Congcr-rather than
the "raced" sign Of her straight hair.
This moment can be read In two ways.
If Birdie Is IdentIfYing With Tlntln, the
White Belgian colonialist, then she uses
Whiteness here once again to mask her
homoerotic desire fOr Alexis. If. howev·
er. Birdie Identifies With the Congolese
(as she does shortly after by referring
to them as "US" (204», then she Is put·
tlng on the face Of blackness In order to
more closely resemble the sexualized
black woman Nick has already slept
With.
Moments later, Birdie explicitly
connects whiteness to heterosexuality.
As she and Nick begin kissing, she com·
pares this experience to the ones with
Alexis, but finds that she doesn't know
how to respond (203). As she touches
Nick'S penis, she begins to feel "a slight
tingling between my legs, the kind I had
felt with AleXis," but this feeling Is
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
quickly extinguished when Nick pushes
her head down his body (203). At that
moment, she realizes that If she
engages In sex With Nick, her Identity as
Jesse Goldman, White heterosexual girl,
will be sealed:
But touching him felt too
real, proof that the game
had gone too far. It wasn't
Birdie, but Jesse, who lay
beneath him, who held him
In her hand, who made his
eyes turn all glassy and his
breath come out uneven. I
nodded that yes, I wanted to
stop. I wondered If he'd
think I was a baby, or a crazY
dyke, as my mother had put
It about the women of
Aurora. (203)
Birdie realizes that It Is her per­
ceived Identity as a White heterosexual
that excites Nick; Jesse, not Birdie,
turns him on. If she touches the part Of
him that Indicates With certainty his
Identity as a White boy. she will cement
her Identity as a White, heterosexual
girl. More than simply refusing the sex­
ual act, Birdie Is refusing the Identity
that accompanies that act fOr her: her
rejection Of sex with Nick mirrors her
rejection of the racial and sexual bina­
ries that organize her life In New
Hampshire.
Such connections between race
and sex are common In many narratives
about passing. For Instance, Siobhan B.
Somerville argues that Johnson'S Ex­
Coloured Man flees his engagement to
the black schoolteacher because mar·
rylng her "would have committed the
narrator to a permanent Identity within
a black middle-class community" (123).
This Identity would be both black and
heterosexual. For Birdie, sex With Nick
would make real her Identity as white
and heterosexual, and she fears taking
this step even as she worries that Nick
will label her a "crazy dyke." AS
Harrlson·Kahan notes, Birdie "expresses
a resistance to heterosexuality that Is
explicitly connected to race" (14)' As
Birdie passes fOr White, then, she also
passes for heterosexual, and Senna
connects the two types of passing by
using the language of perfOrmance.
 Birdie tracks down Ronnie, All's
father, later In the novel, he condemns
his heterosexual passing In earlier
years: ·1 could do what I did for all those
years and play the straight man...Shlt, I
got so good at playing the part of the
positive black brother I could have won
an Emmy· (350). Tying together these
two types of passing (racial and sexuall
enables Senna to highlight the one
place In the novel where passing of nei­
ther sort occurs: Birdie's time at Aurora.
passing No More
Significantly, Birdie's homoerotic
desires and experiences are normalized
at Aurora, a women's-only commune
where race Is completely erased.
Surprisingly, though critics like Harrison­
Kahan, Boudreau, Hunter, and DagboVie
comment extensively on the racial
dynamics of Caucas/a, none critically
examines Birdie's time at Aurora. yet
Aurora functions as a·place of possibility
for Birdie, a space where passing Is not
necessary because Aurora, as Birdie
relates It; Is completely raceless. Telllngly,
Aurora Is the only space In the text where
Birdie does not classIfY others according
to their race, and where her own body Is
not racially scrutinized. More Important·
Iy, Alexis Is Birdie's only friend whose race
Is not revealed. OlVen their-Intimate rela­
tionship, surely this omission on Birdie's
part Is Intentional.
At Aurora, Birdie does not analyZe or
agonize over race. In her recollecttons
about Aurora, she Identifies two women
by nationality rather than race
(Bernadette Is Australian; Zoe Is Israelll
and Birdie's choice to emphasize nation­
ality over race seems Important gIVen the
emphasis on race throughout the narra·
tlve. The only other ·raced· moment In
Aurora comes from sandY's comment to
zoe that feminism was ·an excuse for
'White, bourgeois bitches to complain
about something" (173). While sandY's
remark seems to Indict the women of
Aurora for their whiteness (a whiteness,
we should remember, that she shares),
Birdie as narrator Is only reporting what
sandY has said; Birdie herself seems to be
consciously excluding race as a feature of
Identity at Aurora. ·Whlteness· doesn't
exist at Birdie's Aurora, nor does ·black·
ness.· Color, In fact, disappears altogeth·
er, and thus Aurora becomes the one
10
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
place In the novel where Birdie doesn't
have to pass or perform. The Inclusion of
Aurora separates caucasla from tradition­
al passing narratlVes-here, race disap­
pears entirely, an Impossibility for earlier
narratives that reinforced the
whlte/black binary.
Interestingly, the disappearance of
race at Aurora proVides a space that nor­
malizes homoerotic desire. For Instance,
Birdie'S mOther finds ·sapphlc bliss· In an
affair with Bernadette (136), and It Is here
that Birdie experiments with Alexis (198).
Late In the narrative, when Birdie visits
the father of her first boyfriend, All, and
hears his story of ·passlng· for straight,
she remembers life at Aurora:
The women at Aurora Often
had talked about what lies
they had lived as StePford
wives-before they had
become real, roaring, natural
women. I thought about
Bernadette and my mother,
their blatant kisses and hugs
and nude romps to the lake.
About Alexis and me, our
games of honeymoon. In the
context of Aurora, It had
come to seem as natural as
anYthing else. (350)
This memory Is Significant because It
Illustrates the ease with which homo­
erotic desire Is normalized at Aurora, and
because It further underscores Birdie's
own homoerotic desire. The world of
Aurora provides a safe space for these
women to express their sexual desire
that the outside world condemns. By
creating Aurora as a raceless space,
senna plays on Deborah McDOwell's read·
Ing of Larsen's passing. McDOwell argues
that Larsen uses the relatively ·safe· pass­
Ing narrative as a way to conceal a more
·dangerous· plot of homoerotic desire
(160). By stripping Aurora of race, howev­
er, Senna suggests that such a strategy Is
no longer necessary: her paSSing narra­
tIVe ceases to be a passing narratIVe pre­
cisely when homoerotic desire becomes
•natural."
Aurora promises a space where
race does not exist and where same-sex
desire freely Is expressed. But the text
reminds us that such a space, a utoplc
vision, can only exist temporarily:
 and her mother leave Aurora
after one year (1361. This year proves
prOfOundly Influential on Birdie, as eVI­
denced by the way In which she nar­
rates her time spent there. As opposed
to the primarily linear fashion In which
she narrates the rest of the novel
(beginning In early childhood and pro­
ceeding chronologically until the end
Of the narrative, when she Is fOurteen),
Birdie's narration Of her time at Aurora
deviates from chronological order. We
read about Aurora several times
throughout the text but never get a
description Of the full year unfOlding as
time was spent there. This sense of
time transpires only In Birdie's memory
and Is accessible only through
metonymic chains Of association. Thus
the time at Aurora takes on an almost
dream-like qualltv, becoming a hazy
montage Of memories that reproduces
the utoplc qualities of Aurora.
We also never get an uninterrupt­
ed view Of Birdie's time at the com­
mune. Instead, Aurora enters the nar­
rative In bits and pieces, fragmented
through Birdie's memory and experl·
ence. As we have seen above, Birdie
describes her games Of "honeymoon"
with Alexis when she and Nick explore a
sexual relationship (198-991. Similarly,
Birdie remembers Aurora when she
relates her mother's early loneliness In
New Hampshire (173). Aurora creeps
Into her consciousness when Sandy
laments missing Cole'S first period
(1571. Birdie'S memories Of Aurora flow
Into and out Of the text sporadically
until the end Of the narrative, disrupt·
Ing the linear development Of the novel
and demonstrating their power to
organize Birdie's life. Further, Birdie'S
narration Of Aurora disavows the tern·
poral order (then/now) upheld In the
rest Of the novel, and this shifting Of
boundaries mirrors the shifting Of defl·
nltlonal boundaries that Birdie desires.
Most significantly, however, Aurora
signals the possibility Of a postethnlc
perspective. Toward the end Of the
novel, when Birdie Is talking to Ronnie
and All, she realizes that while Aurora
represents a separate world, that world
stili eXists fOr her: "I wondered If All
would turn against me If he knew my
full story, If he knew all the worlds I had
lived In, worlds I stili carried Inside Of
11
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
me now" (3501. Birdie'S language here
points to a postethnlc perspective: she
Inhabits not one, but multiple, worlds­
worlds that overlap With one another.
No longer content to pass fOr either
black or White, she flees both New
Hampshire and Boston, the sites Of her
dual passing, and lands In CalifOrnia,
reunited With her sister Cole. This
scene, then, represents her "hOme­
coming."
Harrlson·Kahan explicitly links the
moment Of Birdie'S homecoming to
scenes In prior passing novels; In these
earlier novels, she writes, this home·
coming Is "sometimes understood as a
reassertlon of essential Identity" (121.
But, as Harrison-Kahan cautions, to read
Birdie'S homecoming In this misguided
fashion would preclude the post-ethnic
perspective Birdie has been working
toward (12). When she reunites With
Cole, she Identifies With her mixed·
race, yet Visibly-black, sister, and Cole
tells her, "[If] you ever thought you
were the only one, get ready. we're a
dime a dozen out here" (412), Birdie Is
finally "home" In a place where she
doesn't have to pass and where she'S
no longer limited by the black-white
binary that Imprisons earlier passers.
The novel Itself undoes the notion
Of passing In Its postethnlc perspective.
In her reunion With Deck, when Birdie
tells him that she "passed as white"
(391), he argues that passing doesn't
eXist: "there'S no such thing as passing.
We're all Just pretending. Race Is a
complete illusion, make·believe. it's a
costume. We all wear one. You Just
switched yours at some point. That'S
Just the absurdity Of the whole race
game" (391). Cole and Birdie agree with
Deck's latest theory, but also recognize
that theories don't always function
fully In the real world. Cole affirms that
race Is constructed, but adds:
"But...that doesn't mean It doesn't
eXist" (4081. AS mixed-race Individuals,
Cole and Birdie refuse to be circum·
scribed by one racial category, but real·
Ize that such categories nonetheless
eXist. AS Hollinger notes, "Boundaries
are necessary. A postethnlc perspec·
tlve understands this. Which bound·
aries, and where? We are all left With
the responsibility fOr deciding where to
try to draw what cIrcles With whom,
.----- --------
and around what" 11721. And, since
these boundaries are constantly being
redrawn by Individuals as they shift
affiliations, the notion of passing takes
on new meaning: no longer "perma­
nent" and fixed, passing In a postethnlc
world means floating Into and out of
Individually-drawn circles of affiliation.
The last scene In Caucasla shows
Birdie affirming her post-ethnic Identi­
ty, connecting to others like herself.
When she sees a young girl on the bUs,
she sayS the girl "was black like me, a
mixed girl" (413). This pronouncement
Is significant, because It signals the only
time Birdie has fully defined herself on
her own terms. Throughout the rest of
her life, she let others define her­
Marla, her mother, Nick, Mona-but
here she chooses her affiliations and
decides where to draw her own bound­
aries. By choosing to affiliate With
Works Cited
Bennett, Juda. The Passing Figure: Racial
Confusion In Modern American
Literature. NY: Peter Lang, 1996.
Boudreau, Brenda. "letting the BOdy
Speak: 'Becoming' White In caucasJa."
MOdem Language studies 32.1
(2002): 59-70.
Butler, JUdith. Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion Of
Identity. NY: Routlege, 1989.
Chesnutt, Charles W. The House Behind
the Cedars. 1900. Athens: U of
Georgia P, 1988.
Crenshaw, Klmberle. "Intersectlonallty
and Identity Politics: Learning from
Violence against women of Color."
Feminist Theory. Eds. Wendy K.
Kolmar and Frances BartkowskI.
Boston: MCOraw-HIII, 2005. 533-541.
Dagbovle, Sika Alaine. "Fading to White,
Fading Away: Biracial Bodies In
MIChelle Cliff's Abeng and Danzy
Senna's caucasla." African American
Review 40.1 (2006): 93-109.
12
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
"mlxed"ness, rather than blackness,
Birdie rejects the racial binary that lim­
Ited earlier passers In favor of a
postethnlc affiliation. Senna here
rewrites the ending to the traditional
passing narrative. Rather than sketch
her protagonist to suffer the plight of
the tragic mulatto, Senna Invests Birdie
with a self-chosen Identity denied earli­
er passers. Significantly, her narrative
ends not with death, but With dawn:
"the skY above was a bruise of colors
from the Just-rising sun" 14131. Such an
ending Invokes Aurora Ithe goddess of
the dawn), and promises a symbolic
new beginning as well as a postethnlc
space for Birdie and others like her. By
rewriting the traditional passing narra­
tive, Senna Imagines a new social land­
scape where Individuals are allowed to
create their own "circles" and claim
their own affiliations.
Ginsberg, Elaine K., Ed. passing and the
Fictions Of Identity. Durham: Duke
university press, 1996.
Harrison-Kahan, LorI. "passing for White,
Passing for Jewish: Mixed Race
Identity In Danzy Senna and
Rebecca walker: MEWS 30.1 (2005):
19·48.
Hollinger, David A. Postethnlc America.
NY: Basic Books, 1995.
Hunter, Michele. "Revisiting the Third
Space: Reading Danzy Senna's
Caucasla. " Literature and Racial
Ambiguity. Eds. Teresa Hubel and
Nell Brooks. Amsterdam: Rodopl,
2002. 297·316.
Johnson, James Weldon. The Autoblogra­
phV Of an EX-Coloured Man. NY:
VIntage Books, 1989.
Kawash, Samlra. Dislocating the Color
Une. Stanford: stanford UniversItY
press, 1997.
Larsen, Nella. QuiCksand and Passing.
New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1986.
 Deborah E. "'That nameless...
shameful Impulse": Sexuality In
Nella Larsen's Quicksand and
passing." Studies In Black American
Literature Vol. III: Black Feminist
Criticism and Critical Theory. Eds.
Joe welxlmann and Houston A.
Baker, Jr. Greenwood: The Penkevlll
Publishing Company, 1988. 139-163.
Senna, Danzy. Caucasla. NY:
Riverhead Books, 1998.
SOllors, werner. Neither Black Nor White
Yet Both. Cambridge: Harvard UP,
1997.
13
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SOmerville, Siobhan B. Queering the Color
Line. Durham: Duke University
Press, 2000.
Vourvoullas, Bill. "Talking with Danzy
Senna: Newsday 29 Mar. 1998: B11.
wald, Gayle. Crossing the Une. Durham:
Duke University Press, 2000.
Wall, Cheryl."Passing fOr What? Aspects
Of Identity In Nella Larsen's Novels."
Black American Literature Forum
20.1 (1986): 97-111.
webb, Frank. The Garles and Their Friends.
NY: Arno press, 1969.
 olaylnka Agbetuylls an Instructor Of History at Lane College In Jackson, Tennessee.

Miller W. Boyd III Is an Independent historical and political conSUltant who works prima­
rily In st. Louis, MissourI.

Jerry Komia Domatob Is an Assistant Professor In the Department Of Mass

Communications at Alcorn state University In Lorman, MississippI.

Tameka Bradley Hobbs Is the Historian fOr the Valentine Richmond History center In
Richmond, VIrginia.

Ambrous Jacobs Is an Assistant prOfessor and Chairperson Of the Department Of Political

science, Social Work and Sociology at Bennett College In Greensboro, North carolina.

Judson L. Jeffries Is a Professor In the Department Of African American and African

Studies at The Ohio State University In Columbus, Ohio.

James Jones Is an Assistant PrOfessor Of History at Prairie View A and M University In

prairie View, Texas.

Emmanuel Mablengwa Nanluzeyl Is an Associate PrOfessor Of political Science at

savannah State University In savannah, Georgia.

Jackie C. Robinson Is an Assistant PrOfessor Of psychology at Florida A and M University

In Tallahassee, Florida.

Kathryn Rummell Is an Associate PrOfessor Of English at CalIfOrnia Polytechnic State

University In San Luis Obispo, CalifOrnia.

LaQulta SIngleton, a graduate Of Berea College, works at the National Civil Rights
Museum In Birmingham, Alabama.

Leonard A. Slade, Jr. Is a PrOfessor Of Afrlcana Studies at the State University of New York
at Albany In Albany, New York.

James N. upton Is an Associate PrOfessor In the Department Of African American and

African Studies at The Ohio State University In Columbus, Ohio.

Jeanna Fuston White Is an Assistant prOfessor Of English at East Texas Baptist university
In Marshall, Texas.

**** ••• ****.* ••••• ***.*.* •••••••• * ••• *.***.*.* •••••••••••••••••••••••••••

IN ANCIENT AFRICA...
'GRIOr WERE THE COUNSELORS OF KINGS, THEY CONSERVED THE CONSTITUTIONS OF KING·
DOMS BY MEMORY ALONE... IT WAS FROM AMONG THE GRIOTS THAT KINGS USED TO CHOOSE
THE TUTORS FOR YOUNG PRINCES... FOR WANT OF ARCHIVES (THEY) RECORDED THE CUS·
TOMS, TRADITIONS AND GOVERNMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF KINGS...
SUNDIATA, DJIBRIL T. NAINE

ii

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