Rating: 
Summary: I thoroughly enjoyed this book!
Review: From the start, I couldn't put this book down. The book is of course largely about growing up multi-racial in America, but it also encompasses themes that are universal to all of us. What kept me turning the pages is that this story touches on how all of us learn to love and live and accept ourselves both collectively and individually in settings that are difficult to say the least. It seems like the story could've taken place in any urban American city during the turbulence of the '60s and '70s. Having been a child born in Oakland in the '70s I could fully relate to the circumstances and the times that all of the characters struggled through. I also liked how the author takes us through how the characters came to make the choices they do in order to live in the aftermath of the chaos. The protagonist is endearing, funny, flawed, and fun and it all makes her journey and our read delightful and insightful.
Rating: 
Summary: Powerful
Review: This book gives a whole new meaning to the biracial issue. I fell in love with the characters and was enchanted with the story line. I could not put the book down. What is more is the new understanding of broken, biracial families I have recieved after finishing it. The only downfall I found when i read this book was with the ending. It seemed to me as if Danzy Senna was tired of writing so he hurried and wrapped things up to be done with it. Other than that, it was excellant, and I would recommend it to anyone with interrest of reading.
Rating: 
Summary: racist or realistic?
Review: This book has been heralded by numerous critics as "poigant," "stunning," "breathtaking," etc. So who am I to criticize?On a second reading of "Caucasia," I found that things that slightly bugged me now downright annoyed me. All the characters are racist to varying degrees. The WASPS, those of mixed race, the African Americans, etc. They also seem filled with varying degrees of self-hatred for being white, black, or not black/white enough. The protagonist's mother is white and expends much energy on trying to get her children to hate their WASP relatives. The protagonist's dad does likewise when it comes to blacks who don't act "black" enough. Small wonder, Birdie and her sister Cole are ever-so-slightly confused. The true wonder is, that they don't become even more troubled. Reading this book, I found myself longing for more likeable characters. After Cole was "abducted" by her dad, there was this void that was never satisfactorily filled. A character can have prejudices and still be someone the reader is drawn to and cares about. But except for Birdie and Cole, there was no one. "Caucasia" is a wasteland when it comes to engaging you with its characters. And it leaves a very sour taste in your mouth.
Rating:
Summary: WINNER OF OUR "OSCAR" AWARD 2002 FOR MOST CHALLENGING
Review: The book is about race, politics,history and different types of relationships. It is intelligently written. Though learning more about Cole would have been interesting, the story is about Birdie's journey to determine who and what she is. The journey undertaken and the questions posed are not simple; unanswered questions and an inconclusive ending seem like an appropriate way to close the story.
Rating:
Summary: colorblind!
Review: I never really much enjoyed reading about racial issues. I always found them very unfair -- my people, the Jewish people - were oppressed just as other groups were. However, this book gave me a whole new perspective on racial issues. How hard it must have been -- both for black and white people -- people of any color -- to try to blend in - or to try to be something they are not? I cannot imagine the stuggle that so many people had to endure in times of racial distress. We all face discrimination -- in the mix of trying to fit in, be popular, be successful (however one's culture defines success) -- what an unnecessary and seemingly painful experience! -- Nevertheless painful, Caucasia is a story of trying to be and have what one cannot have. The end is painfully realistic: If you don't do for you, no one will...
Rating:
Summary: Black, white, and gray.....
Review: While I found that Senna, in Caucasia, tells a coming-of age story, I also found it to have a disheartening story. Nevertheless, the message -- at least that I got -- is that no matter who you are, we are not defined by the color of your skin, the way you speak, where you live. This books takes us through "Birdie's" experiences with her mother when she and her mom separate from Deck (Birdie's father), and Birdie's sister, Cole. While the book does deal with white/black issues, the real story is more than skin deep -- the lesson, anyway. In the beginning of the story, the reader is charmed by Birdie's innocence and her made-up language "Elemeno" that she and her sister spoke. As time goes on, the charm to the book faded for me. Also, language barriers fade, racism fades, and the sad part is that I felt the book really leaves you in the gray area of life: That is, nothing is for certain, absolutes do not always hold true, and, in this gray area, no matter what we look like or where we are from we all are blessed and cursed with the most widespread of experiences: Life.
Rating:
Summary: A Journey Inside the Mind
Review: For the first time,I got the chance to learn what it might have been like to be and discriminated against being white in a black community. But this is not only a book about race. When "Birdie" is separated from her sister,Cole, she spends time with her mom in the "underground world" and lives under the veil of another person. As she grows, so do her worries, fears and dreams. Her hopefulness to be reunited with her sister causes her to only live in the past, walking blindsighted and backwards. She looks at her past in black and white, never thinking to turn around and do what we all must learn to do....move on.
Rating:
Summary: Enlightening
Review: Birdie cannot remember a time when her parents were ever happy. This simple statement of fact paints the reality of Caucasia. After her parents, her Caucasian mother and black father, call it quits, their daughters Birdie, the youngest who looks white, and Cole with her brown skin and curly hair, become pawns to their parents insanity. Each parent is on the run with the child who most resembles him or her. The story is told through the eyes of Birdie who misses her sister Cole so much that the only thing sustaining her is her belief in their eventual reunion. After Cole leaves in the middle of the night with Deck, their father, and his new black girlfriend headed for Brazil, "he needs a strong black woman, he's had enough of the crazy white girl", Birdie and her mother spend years traveling from one state to another staying one step ahead of the authorities or so her mother believes. After about 5 years on the run, they settle down in New Hampshire and there they are able to achieve some semblance of a normal life but in order to do this in this overwhelmingly white town, Birdie must pass for white. Senna chronicles Birdie's life as an adolescent with such grace and power, I could feel her pain. She was placed in an unbelievable situation but she coped and was able to overcome her situation. Deck had a theory called Canaries in the Coal Mine based on the fact that canaries were placed into coal mines to gauge how poisonous the air underground was. He believed mulattos historically have gauged how poisonous American race relations are. I believe what multiracial individuals can really teach us all is tolerance, and show us how harmful and detrimental our attitudes about race really are. Perhaps they can lead us out of the coal mines. Paraphrasing Walter Mosley in Devil in the Blue Dress, race in America runs both ways, it harms us all socially, financially and most of all spiritually. Reviewed by Ruby
APOOO BookClub
Rating:
Summary: A great, important book
Review: This is the best American passing narrative I have ever read. It avoids all the false baggage of the "tragic mulatto" tradition, and instead makes entirely new space for a serious contemplation of mixed-race.
Rating:
Summary: A study in ambivalence
Review: This is one of those books to which the plot seems secondary. It's a traditional coming-of-age story: girl discovers her family's dark side and learns to accept it. The ornamentations - parents who border on psychotic and a backdrop of barely-contained racial tension - are at best only that; at worst they are confusing and alienating. The real draw of the novel is the shifts it details and delights in: the narrator's transition from black to white to black again; the secret language, somewhere between thought and word, she constructs with her sister; the flexible realities constructed by her and her mother as they flee a sometimes-real, sometimes-imaginary oppressor. I'm not sure if this book is worthwhile as a lesson in race relations, interracial marriage, or bi-racial living - it's too self-conscious at times, and the only thing to learn seems to be that nobody is really comfortable in their own skin. But as an excursion into a land of shadows, the book is marvelous.
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