Caucasia by Danzy Senna

Danzy Senna’s book, Caucasia, is a fiction book which takes you on a ride through two young girls’ lives growing up in Roxbury in the 1970s. With a black, intellectual father, Deck Lee, whose history only goes back to his grandmother and a white mother, Sandy Lee, who grew up in Boston along with heirs from a well known historic white family, the two girls take on different appearances. Cole Lee, the older sister, has milk chocolate skin and perfect curly African hair while her little sister, Birdie Lee, takes after their mother and has creamy coffee skin and straight hair. The sisters are sent to a black power school where they both encounter hardships and trials in order to be accepted, especially Birdie who struggles to be accepted as a black student. Soon thereafter the girls are separated from each other and everything they know. Cole goes to Brazil with their father, Deck and his girl friend, Carmen, in an attempt to escape racism while Birdie goes into hiding with their activist mother, Sandy, in order to escape trouble. Birdie soon devises a plan to escape their psychotic mother and find her sister again. Read on to discover how she finds her beloved sister.
Lisa E