Certain events in one's life can have lasting effects and can completely change who a person is. In Caucasia, Birdie’s life is changed when her father and Cole leave and Sandy takes Birdie on the run. All her life, Birdie was wavering between where she fit in being half black and half white, yet not considering herself white. She has had to change her personality and her identity with every new place she travels and at times she doesn't even fully know who she is. Throughout the novel Birdie has gone through a lot of change and finding out who she is and discovering her own identity is something she now struggles with. The trials Birdie has gone through have affected her in many ways changing her mentally and physically In the beginning…show more content… Senna writes “I started wearing my hair in a tight braid to mask its texture. I had my ears pierced and convinced my mother to buy me a pair of gold hoops like the other girls at school wore… I stood many nights in front of the bathroom mirror, practicing how to say “nigger” the way the kids in school did it… ” (62-63). I believe that because Cole said Birdie was black that Birdie believed and embraced it and started to change herself to be “more black” in her appearance and her mentality. Another result of Cole's statement is Birdie getting a new friend, Maria, whose first words she says to Birdie are “so, you black?”(63), During this interaction Maria tells Birdie that Ali likes her and that is she dates him she can be part of “The Brown Sugars” club. In a way, it seems that Cole’s identification of Birdie being black makes everyone else at school accept her whereas before when they consider her white they had…show more content… When Birdie makes the decision to leave New Hampshire and go back to Boston Senna writes “ I wondered, as I passed the clear abandoned lake - silver, still, silent - if I too would forever be fleeing in the dark, abandoning parts of myself that I no longer wanted, in search of some part that had escaped me. Killing one girl in order to let the other one free” (289). Birdie has never been able to decide who she is and sees two versions of herself, one version as being black and the other as being white. This same idea comes up when she is at Dot’s house and begins wondering how her mother is reacting to her being gone. Birdie thinks “Or maybe she would find me there, in that bed - the other me, Jesse Goldman… Maybe I was still there. It was too strange to think that Jesse Goldman was really gone, that I had erased her in just one night” (306). After this moment in the novel I believe Birdie will stay Birdie and finally find her own identity. She is done being who her mother wanted her to be and is ready to become who she sees
