Theme Of Passing In Literature Essay

A common theme in literature is the notion of “passing”, especially in works about race. Passing is where a character takes on another identity to meet an objective. This could be trying to escape racial persecution or to obtain a better economic status. One example is Birdie, the main character of Caucaisa, who is forced to pass as Jesse Goldman a white Jewish girl. In the novel Caucasia by Danzy Senna the protagonist Birdie “passes” as a white girl to escape from the FBI, but it takes a toll on her identity and it diminishes her sense of self. Birdie is forced to pass as a white girl, and she loses contact with her black identity. Her mother forces her to pass as a white girl in order to escape from the FBI. “The FBI would be looking for a white woman on the lam with her black child. But the fact that I

She asks people around her if they think she is black, or what color do they think she is. The result of playing this game is that she slowly takes on more and more of a white identity. She increasingly confused with who she is. She has to ask other people what whiteness is like. She is unable to figure it out herself, so she has to rely on the opinion of others. “It was to strange to think that Jesse Goldman was really gone, that I had erased her in just one night”(pg 306) Her white identity is not permanent, so she can remove it very quickly and resort to her true black self. The novel Caucasia examines how racial identity forms one's self awareness. In many works up to this point, blackness or whiteness is binary. Danzy makes a compelling case through the ordeal of Birdie that a person is composed of a symphony of racial and ethnic elements, each of which contributes some piece to the whole. Nobody is one of anything. the notion of passing is turned from binary to a chameleon. The twist of the novel is that a blend of identity turns out to be negative. This is brought out through the use of