Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Caucasia Part II

As the reading has started to come to a close, things are really starting to heat up. I was so surprised and dumbfounded when Patrice just decides to run back to Boston after the party in New Hampshire. I like this part though, because she never really belonged in New Hampshire and things make more sense with her living with Dot and Taj in Boston. She also seems a lot happier living with Dot, because she no longer has to live a lie.
Also, I never thought she was actually going to go and find her father and her sister, but now that she got the information on where they are from Ronnie, it seems as though she might actually find them. Then, I think she's probably going to hook up with Ali which is a good thing, because she said she couldn't let a white man "inside her".
Finally, I think that she has finally made her transformation back to Birdie Lee after six years, because she has stopped telling so many lies and has opened up to Dot, Ali, and Ronnie. Because of this, I think the reason that she cannot go back to live with her mother is that her mother is still living a lie, and Birdie doesn't want to go back to that. I can see a happy ending coming up, but Mr. Kunkle said that it was a twisted ending so I don't know whats going to happen.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Caucasia Part I

My first impressions of this book were that it was going to be just another book about racism in the mid-20th century, but once I started reading further into the book I found that it was much more complex than that.
I like this book a lot because it's easy to read and it has a more modern style than the previous ones that we have read. I also like it because Danzy does a good job describing in detail what life was like for most lower-middle class families in the mid-late seventies and early eighties. One of the only things that bugs me about the book is that at times I think she writes just for filler, but other than that the book is pretty well-written.
I think the main reason for Danzy's writing of this book was to describe her life growing up, so that it is an easy story to start with, being her first novel. She writes it well though, making good observations of how things were in the seventies still for mixed race families. I liked the points that she made that even after all of MLK's hard work there was still a lot of racism going on from both sides of the spectrum and how pissed off the blacks were at the whites for all the years that they were mistreated and still are.
Finally I think one of the main points that she works to make is that even in this modern time of the setting of the book, it is still hard for blacks and whites to live together. She shows this through the act of Deck, Cole, and Carmen leaving for Brazil while Patrice and Sandy are left behind.