42 pages • 1 hour read
Caucasia
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Part 1, Chapters 4-6
Part 1: “negritude for beginners”
Chapter 4 Summary: “golliwog’s revenge”
Chapter 4 introduces Deck’s new girlfriend, Carmen, who is African American. Carmen becomes a role model for Cole, who meets her when she is stuck at her father’s house for a week during a snowstorm. Carmen dotes on Cole but shows irritation when Birdie joins them. Cole secretly passes some of Carmen’s gifts on to Birdie, but Birdie understands that Deck, Carmen, and Cole are slowly becoming a black family and that Cole wants a black mother figure.
One day, Sandy unexpectedly takes the girls to visit their grandmother. The choice confuses Birdie, because Sandy’s relationship with her mother, Penelope Lodge, is tense. Penelope disapproves of her daughter’s bohemian lifestyle, her political activities, and the fact that she is overweight. Sandy resents that her mother is racially tone-deaf and gave Cole a Golliwog doll for Christmas. Penelope bought the doll because Sandy had one growing up. Deck found it hilarious that the girls loved the doll, which is commonly known as a racist caricature (98). Penelope is a proud descendent of Massachusetts’s famous Puritan minister and witch hunter, Cotton Mather. She has always favored Birdie for the same reason Deck favors Cole.
Birdie describes the contrast between the two sides of her family. She notes: “While there seemed to be remnants of my mother’s family everywhere—history books, PBS specials, plaques in Harvard Square—my father’s family was a mystery” (99). She describes her father’s birthplace as Louisiana but knows that his sister Dot had been born in Boston. About her paternal grandmother Nana, she only knows that a Creole family, who bleached her skin and treated her like a maid (100), adopted her. Nana was a top student at her black college in Alabama, studied Russian, and wanted to move to Moscow, where socialism promised colorblind equality.
Sandy visits her mother to ask for money. She does not tell Penelope what it is for, and Penelope reluctantly writes her a check. As Sandy and the girls are leaving, Penelope tells Birdie, “you could be Italian. Or even French” (106). Birdie expects her mother to respond angrily that her daughter is black, but to Birdie’s surprise, her mother answers, “Yes mother, she could be” (107). Sandy’s shift in attitude demonstrates her decreasing interest in maintaining race consciousness and foreshadows her decision to make Birdie pass as white.
Chapter 5 Summary: “disintegration of funk”
Sandy, Deck, Birdie, and Cole have a family meeting at the Polynesian restaurant Aku-Aku. Birdie finds the atmosphere gaudy and fake and feels something bad is about to happen. She notices how much more stylish and grownup her sister looks and knows that it signals her growing closeness with Carmen. Deck awkwardly hugs Birdie and tells her that he, Cole, and Carmen are going on a “little trip” to Brazil. When they part, Cole waves to Birdie from the car window, though she does not say goodbye. At home, Sandy will not answer any of Birdie’s questions.
Late that night, Birdie feels Cole come into her room and tuck the Golliwog under her pillow. Sandy wakes Birdie early the next morning and tells her to pack. She has dyed her hair with henna, and at first, Birdie does not recognize her. Sandy’s is frantic: “She paced the room and chattered on while I stuck random objects into my bag. I listened to her whispering to herself. Something about a felony and the fuzz and prison time” (124). They get into her mother’s green Pinto and begin their undercover journey.
Chapter 6 Summary: “phenotypic peek-a-boos”
On the road, Birdie notices a marked change in her mother: “Since we had begun running, she had eaten with a restraint I had never seen her use before” (126). Sandy has lost her appetite for most things, and the separation has affected her more than she shows. They have traveled to Maine and move from motel to motel. Birdie does not know their final destination.
Before Deck left, he gave Birdie a box of Afrocentric-themed objects he called “Negrobilia” (127). Birdie notes that the box and the Golliwog doll are all she has left of her father and Cole—and all she has left of her blackness. Sandy is convinced that Cointelpro is conspiring with the media to keep her name and fugitive status out of the papers. She decides they need to assume new names and identities. They settle on Sheila Goldman, nee Dorsett, for Sandy, and Jesse Goldman for Birdie, her imaginary father David Goldman’s Jewish ancestry providing the explanation for her ethnic looks.
Part 1, Chapters 4-6 Analysis
The second half of Part 1 provides the narrative catalyst for Birdie to pass as white. Her family’s dynamic changes and her parents reestablish themselves in their own racial and cultural identities, no longer needing to create the impression of an integrated family. The daughters align with the racial camp they most resemble. The change seems inevitable; in a world divided between black and white, Birdie’s family stands out. After the bombing in Berkeley and escalating racial violence, Deck fears for his and Cole’s safety: “This country is suicide for a black man. Suicide” (118), he says during their meeting at Aku-Aku. Sandy thinks he is taking the cowardly route, telling him “you’re just like my mother. In blackface” (118). Deck’s caution versus Sandy’s radicalism highlight the differing degrees of danger each side of the family faces. To escape America’s racism, Deck and Cole must leave the country, while Sandy and Birdie can leave the black community and disappear into the white world.
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