Caucasia Part i: Writing Style and Aging

I'm not generally negative toward this book. Were it not last quarter of Senior Year, I'd probably be a lot more into it. Caucasia took a while to pick up, but once it did, I came to appreciate the extensive character building that later made Birdie's trip to Boston and the San Francisco Area all the more memorable and moving. It wasn't the story itself that tending to fail at this task. I firmly believe it's the writing style that Danzi Senna takes.

Although it's supposed to be Birdie looking back on the past, she failed to make this apparent, and it just struck me as the voice of a 20-something-year-old from age 10 to 17. I didn't see it until Birdie grew older, and looking back, her childhood seemed rather mature. The conversations between Cole and Birdie sounded rather developed and adult, not developing at all throughout the novel. Her observations of the people throughout Dot's house at the beginning (the bit where Birdie is shown the guns, presumably a Black Panther-esque situation. Even "elemeno" failed to reach credibility for me. Little kids often do have long-lasting habits and even alternative social structures, but this form of language seemed almost a little too sophisticated for me for it to sound at all believable to come out of 10-year-olds.

Senna structured the conflicts well- the arguments and senses of paranoia suffered throughout the novel were structured the point of nearly making me feel uncomfortable and miserable with the situation. However, I just couldn't get the fact in my head that Birdie had changed ages in the book. This did detract a lot of the book from me.