Caucasia by Danzy Senna brings to life an era in American history known for culture, conflict and change.  The novel focuses on Birdie, the daughter of a black intellectual father and a white civil rights activist mother, and the troubles she faced as a biracial girl living in the 1970s.  Although the book is well known for its ideas on racial identity as a whole, Birdies struggles are more focused.  The universal theme of Caucasia is focused on self identity with racial identity as a smaller part.   This is evident through the outcome of the physical differences between Cole and Birdie, as well as the emotional dilemmas birdie faces in her search for an identity.

            As the story opens, Birdie and her sister Cole share a close bond that is symbolized by their secret language.  However, as the story unfolds, we find that Cole and Birdie come to live very different lives.  Ironically this difference reflects the difference in their appearance.  Birdie has a light completion with olive skin while Cole inherited her fathers dark skin and kinky hair. When their mother and father split up, the children were divided.  Birdie with their mother and Cole with their father.

            Birdies mother has reason to fear she is in trouble and so she and Birdie are forced to assume fake identities to elude government officials.  They pose as the widow and child of a Jewish rabbi.  For her own safety, Birdie is forced to deny her own race and form a false identity as a white, Jewish girl named Jessica Goldman.  Although this scheme is in Birdies best interests, it causes her to further doubt her racial and self identities.

            A main contributor to many of Birdies struggles with developing her own racial identity is the physical difference between herself and Cole.  Although Birdies ethnicity is constantly questions, Cole is easily categorized as black.  Although this categorization is not completely accurate, Cole is able to identify with the African-American culture.  Birdie however, does not distinctly characterize a specific race.  She is easily mistaken as Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Jewish, Mediterranean, or many combinations of mixed ethnicity.  At a time in history when tension between races was volatile, a biracial culture was almost nonexistent. Birdie was rejected from the black community for being too-white and shunned by whites for not being white enough.  Despite her half-white heritage, Cole is left out of white society.  However, she is accepted by black culture and therefore able to form a strong racial identity which leads to developing her own self identity.  This is one of the situations that proves Birdies situation unique to other biracial struggles.  Both Cole and Birdie are biracial, but because Cole is able to identify with a race, she is able to form her own self identity.  Birdie seeks to find a biracial identity but for her, it is important to first find her self identity.