Fading to white, fading away: biracial bodies in Michelle Cliff’s Abeng and Danzy Senna’s Caucasia |
Fading to white, fading away: biracial bodies in Michelle Cliff’s Abeng and Danzy Senna’s Caucasia
African American Review
2006-03-22
Michelle Goldberg
However dissimilar individual bodies are, the compelling idea of common, racially indicative bodily characteristics offers a welcome short-cut into the favored forms of solidarity and connection, even if they are effectively denied by divergent patterns in life chances and everyday experiences.—Paul Gilroy, Against Race
the invisible in me is counter to the visible.—Michelle Cliff, “The Black Woman As Mulatto”
Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1986) and Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998) typify a recent literary uptrend: a dramatic increase in biracial fiction, memoir, and theory, in biracial discourses of passing, invisibility, and identity. Abeng, which received widespread critical acclaim, and Caucasia, the winner of numerous 1998 “Best Book” awards, introduce characters whose mixed race parentage holds true for a growing number of multiracial Americans. Both novels offer biracial characters who resist racial labels while staying especially connected to “blackness.” In Abeng and Caucasia, respectively, the white bodies of Clare Savage and Birdie Lee misrepresent identities that remain ascribed to, yet not confined by, “blackness.”…
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Tags: Abeng, African American Review, Caucasia, Danzy Senna, Michelle Cliff, Michelle Goldberg