caucasia notes

Caucasia: Part I Notes
1) Theme: Innocence
“Before I ever saw myself, I saw my sister” (1).
Significance: Birdie sees herself in her sister and thinks of herself and Cole as the same person. She doesn’t notice the physical differences between them because she hasn’t experience racism yet.
2) Symbol: Elemeno
“My grandmother said we must have spent too much time around those ‘backwards children’ and that was why we spoke in tongues” (6).
Significance: Birdie and Cole have invented their own language that only they can understand. This represents the bond they have, and how they are the only ones who will ever truly understand each other.
3) Theme: Racism
“‘Who’s that?’ ‘She’s a Rican or something?’ ‘I thought this was supposed to be a black school’” (43).
Significance: The kids at school discriminate against Birdie because she is mixed and looks very white. She isn’t accepted because she isn’t fully black. Birdie feels she doesn’t fit in anywhere.
4) Theme: Identity/Racism
“’Alright brotherman,’ the younger one said to my father with a smirk. ‘Who’s the little girl?’…’She’s my daughter. Is there a problem?’…the cops didn’t believe my father”(60).
Significance: The cops didn’t believe that Birdie and her father are related because they have different skin tones, so they automatically assume the worst. Even though the cops were told otherwise, they didn’t believe Birdie. This has a big affect on Birdie because she is taught by society that she and her father do not belong together.
5) Theme: Passing
“I stood many nights in front of the bathroom mirror, practicing how to say ‘nigger’ the way the kids in school did, dropping the ‘er’ so that it became not a slur, but a term of endearment, ‘nigga’”(63).
Significance: Birdie really wants to fit in, so she is attempting to make herself seem “blacker” than she really is. This doesn’t come natural to her because of the way she was raised, but she is doing it all to fit in at school.
6) Theme: Identity
“Cole was slipping out of my reach slowly, inevitably, like water in cupped hands. Not because of our father’s preachings, but more because she found herself in an adolescent torpor with no one, including myself, to talk about it” (74).
Significance: Cole has found a new, teenage identity where she can no longer connect the same way she used to with Birdie. Although no because of race, the new change in Cole’s identity was still racially driven in order to fit in at her new school and also find a new connection with Carmen.
7) Theme: Identity
“I could sense it was Cole from her breathing pattern, and felt her standing over me for a few minutes, watching me as I pretended to sleep. Then he hand brushed a hair out of my face, a feathery touch” (123).
Significance: Even though Cole and Birdie have been growing apart, they will always have the bond they had when they were little to keep them from losing each other.
8) Theme: Racism
“I looked back at Carmen. Rifling through her purse for something, she said, ‘If she wants to stay here with her mom, let her, Deck. But we gotta get going’”(113).
Significance: It seems Carmen doesn’t like Birdie as much as Cole, and this might be because of the racial differences between the two. Carmen is darker like Cole, so that is why she favors her.
9) Character: Cole
“A cold drop hit my forehead. It was the next morning, and Cole was leaning over me, her hair wet, shiny ringlets, water clinging to the ends. She was serious, upset about something. It was in her eyes. She held my face in her hands, and her curls lightly tickled my cheek” (23).
Significance: This is a really good description of Cole. You can really picture what she looks in this instance.
10) Theme: Racism/Identity
“’ We talk like white girls, Birdie.’ She picked up the magazine she had been reading, and handed it to me. ‘We don’t talk like black people. It says so in this article”(53).
Significance: Cole and Birdie have specific ways that each different race talks. This also shows that they identify themselves as black, since that is who they are trying to talk like.
11) Theme: Invisibility
“…I should leave. But I wanted to test whether I was really invisible. It was a feeling that thrilled me even as it scared me” (14).
Significance: Birdie feels she is never seen, and even tests her limits to see if she will be noticed.
12) Theme: Passing
“’I need to… find me a strong black woman. A sistah’…’Since when do you talk that way?’ ’A sistah.’ ‘Don’t blacken your speech around me’” (25).
Significance: Deck tries to make a racial barrier between him and Sandy, however, Sandy see right through it.
13) Theme: Racism
“One lone black ma being pulled from his Volkswagon only to disappear under a cloud of white fists” (39).
Significance: Birdie is experiencing racism very strongly for one of the first times in her life.
14) Theme: Race
“During his research for it, he had given Cole and me a sort of racial IQ test using building blocks, questionnaires and different colored dolls”(27).
Significance: Deck is cleverly making them choose their race with IQ tests rather than having them choose. This way the race they identify as cannot be disputed.
15) Theme: Passing/Constructing Race
“’In a country as racist as this, you’re either black or you’re white. And no daughter of mine is going to pass’” (27).
Significance: Birdies dad isn’t satisfied with allowing Birdie to be mixed, and wants her to identify herself as either black or white. He wants her to identify herself and then accept herself for the race she is without trying to pass as both black and white.