Caucasia Themes

Caucasia Themes

One of the central themes explored in this novel is how identity is constructed both socially and psychologically. Birdie is a girl who literally sees herself when she looks into her sister's face, partly because she sees evidence of her own "blackness," but the outside world will focus only on their differences. When Birdie is first enrolled in an all-black school with Cole, the other children are initially extremely hostile until Cole sets them straight: "Birdie isn't white. She's black. Just like me." Birdie still feels, however, that she is acting a part: "But I did feel different—more conscious of my body as a toy, and of the ways I could use it to disappear into the world around me." The novel is filled with words like "acting," "performance," "reinvention," "changing," "blending," and "shifting;" even as a child Birdie feels like a chameleon trying to take on the coloring of...
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