Caucasia by Danzy Senna is a book mainly about the story of Birdie and Cole, daughters of a black father and a white mother who are intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights movement in 1970's Boston. The sisters are so close that they have created a private language, yet to the outside world they can't be sisters: Birdie appears to be white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at the afro centric school they attend. For Birdie, Cole is the mirror in which she can see her own blackness.
             There are many passages that illustrate the theme of the book but the one that stands out the most is on page ninety three. The passage is "Carmen turned to me and frowned. Then, looking back at the man, she said, "Yeah, that's Cole's little sister, even if she doesn't look like a sister." She giggled at her pun rather unhappily, with an anxious expression, and touched my hair as if to show she was just kidding around. James turned away, seeming embarrassed. Before starting on Cole's hair, he handed me a Tootsie Pop out of the drawer at his side and winked at me, saying, "See how long you can suck it before you have a bite." . . ."
             Although this passage shows only one side of the book it still embodies the theme of the book because it shows how much the sisters had to endure because of their different appearances. These two sisters are so close and it is very awkward to be so close in a society where they are extremes. When Carmen says this it hurts both Cole and Birdie because all they want to be seen as are sisters. They want people to stop looking at them as black and white and start looking at them as sister and sister.
             This dilemma follows them throughout their lives. This passage shows that people in the society they lived in did not understand them. They all saw them as a strange thing and all the sisters wanted was to be accepted as siste...