Danzy Senna Critical Essay | Caucasia

Critical Essay by Kirkus Reviews

SOURCE: A review of Caucasia, in Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 1997, p. 1733.

[In the following review, the critic praises Senna's Caucasia for its effective evocation of being caught between two races.]

[Caucasia, is a]n ambitious debut novel that powerfully, if schematically, addresses the conditions of those living in the great racial no-man's-land—that is to say, the children of mixed marriage—who belong to both races but are often also rejected by both.

The author, a young Boston-raised writer, is herself the product of a mixed marriage, which gives her first fiction an authenticity that compensates for a plot that's often more a series of instructive set-pieces than a seamless narrative. Set in the late 1970s and early ′80s, the story takes place against the rise and decline of black power, as well as against radical activism, both of which are vividly detailed and form part of the subplot. Birdie, the...
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