The Blacknote Books and Caucasia

I finished reading Caucasia last night and I feel a littel ambivalent about it. Because the story is told from the perspective of a child/teenager, its impossible to talk about this book in the same way that we’ve talked about other passing narratives. For instance, Birdie’s passing was not something she chose to do. Rather, she was forced into it by her mother. So, in the beginning, she thought of it as a type of game; make believe. It is only later, when she realizes that this game may infact become her reality, that she begins to feel as though she’s being held captive in a state of whiteness. Because we feel that Birdie is an unwilling particpant, its hard to impute agency and responsiblity on her actions. Instead of judging Birdie, i felt myself sympathizing with her. I realize that the point of this class is not to form emotional attachments to the characters in the books that we read and the movies that we watch, but i do think that a large part of our satisfaction/disatisfaction with these characters and their stories lies in our feelings about their motives to pass or the way that they interpret their experience as passers. With that said, I felt that Birdie’s story can be read as an example of the ways in which those who are able to pass are forced to pass, whether they are the primary agents of their passing or not. I think that inmost of the narratives we’ve studied, the individual who is passing is seen as having made a concious decision. But i think that by focusing on the element of choice involved in passing,we have to examine other factors that make this choice seem pre-determined or unavoidable.
One part of the book that really resonated with me was Deck’s ( Birdie and Cole’s father) metaphor of mulattoes being the “Canaries in a coal mine” for US race relations. I thought that this metaphor went hand in hand with our understanding of the tragic mulatto in Western Literature. He says, “muattoes had historically been the gauge of how poisonous American race relations were.”(393) **Shaking Head** Tragic Mulattoes.

I don’t have much to say about Blacknote Books because we covered everything in class but I personally felt that this was the best book we’ve read this semester. I think that the rawness of the content was really provocative and it forced me to think about things that I normally don’t think about.