Danzy SennaRecensioni

This book has been on my TBR for years, nearly forgotten, until I read an interview with Percival Everett where he mentioned that Senna is his wife, and according to him the funny one in the family. I hate to admit that I finally picked up this book because of Senna's spouse, but it is true -- not because she married well, but because I trust Everett's taste in literature without question and I assume he would not marry a bad writer. This is illogical, but I am a romantic. In this case, it also appears I am 100% correct. Senna is a wonderful writer and has a unique perspective, a sharp dry wit, and an eye for finding pathos in the most unexpected places. I also love that Senna is not afraid to leave giant questions to the reader, if you are afraid of ambiguity this is not for you. This book lives in that gray truth, that everyone is experiencing everything differently, that you can be sitting beside someone having an experience, and only parts of it are shared, most of the experience is what each unique person brings to the moment.

I don't want to talk too much about the story because I don't think I can do that without ruining some of its surprises, but I will share the setup. We see this story through the eyes of Birdie Lee, the youngest daughter of an interracial couple in 1960s Boston. Her parents are both involved in the Black Power movement, her Black father as an academic and her White mother as a committed if erratic revolutionary running from her Boston Brahmin past. Birdie and her sister Cole are collateral damage as their parents' marriage and the Black Power movement implode. Cole is dark-skinned and nappy-haired (the only family member able to pick out a decent afro) and Birdie is light-skinned and straight-haired, with people assuming she is Sicilian, Puerto Rican, and Jewish in different parts of the story. Their lives after the implosion (and to a lesser extent even before the implosion) are defined in many ways by the way people perceive their race. It was interesting how Senna ground the "race is a construct" discussion under her heel because for these purposes, for these little girls, it just does not matter if it is a construct, it is their reality and the world makes them choose up sides, or more accurately the world chooses for them. They create an alternate world and language, Elemeno, where there is no such thing as race, and where everyone can transform at will, but sadly they are the only two who live there.

This is where I am going to stop talking about what happens in the story, though for those interested I am sure other reviews cover it. I have not read other reviews, and I enjoyed being surprised by the way the story rolled out. I will say that the story places Birdie in different environments, and those changes impact everything about her life. I liked seeing how race was a sort of aggravating factor in other experiences and facts such as physically maturing, being the new kid in school, connecting to romantic partners, and pursuing academic success.

Ultimately I found this story challenging and moving and also really engrossing. Birdie is a great companion to travel with. She is wise and a bit world-weary but she is also a child and Senna never loses sight of that.

This book is weird. Maria the main character is confused about her feelings for her fiancée and has a bizarre obsession with a poet she knows casually. She does very weird things because of this poet.

Around that she muses about race (both she & her fiancée are bi-racial) and how they fit into their roles as black or white people depending on their choices.

I kept waiting for something more important to happen but we are just stuck in Maria’s mind for a few months and there’s no real resolution to anything.

I learned about this on a podcast by somebody who said it was the best book they’d read in ages. I didn’t get it.

This novel is kind of an African American/Caucasian version of "The Parent Trap". When the parents split up, the Black parent takes the darker kid, and the Caucasian parent takes the lighter kid. This story is told through the perspective of the lighter kid, who knows about as much about the location of her father and sister for most of the novel as the girls in "The Parent Trap". Somehow, improbably in my opinion, Senna makes it all work.

Interesting book about race in America, as well as interracial families. There are similarities between the story and the writer's own life, but she changed the mother dramatically for the fiction.

Biracial sisters who look white and black; family divides as the girls grow up in the early 70's. A powerful coming-of-age story and a groundbreaking work on identity and race in America.

so gay, so good

Maria is a mixed race college student who is very fair skinned, she is adopted at a very young age by a black woman who desired a black baby. Maria has dated several white young men but is now dating and plans to marry Khalil, a mixed race young man. Maria is doing her thesis on the Jonestown massacre. She and khalil are being filmed for a documentary about mixed race young people ie The New People.
For whatever reasons, Maria becomes obsessed with a black poet she meets. She breaks into his apartment and sort of stalks him. Her behavior is curious, illegal and not explained by the author.

The ending is so bizarre and abrupt, I didn't quite get it.

This book was definitely interesting, with the narrator Maria making for a complex and layered character, although I had a lot of misgivings about whether she was a reliable narrator and the wisdom of many of her choices. I can see why this book would resonate with many, and it kinda did with me, but not completely. My feelings towards the book are mixed - I honestly can't say either that I liked it or didn't like it.

Spoilers Abound
I think I hated this book. It is so negative & so blaming. Yes she is screwed up by reality but so are we all. What a sad story! I starting yelling at her but it didn't help. I guess she has no one to turn to. Jonestown was a horror but why was it her focus? What about what the boy asks? Why was she that way? What is Ethan's role? And why was Khalil so oblivious? I feel like reading it was a bad experience.

This novel made me think. I’ve been white all my life, never really thought about it, certainly didn’t ever wonder if I or my friends and family were doing whiteness right. I think, aside from the KKK, Nazis and other such groups, we white folk just take our whiteness for granted (it may be different in the south). Maria is what she terms as a one dropper, just barely, barely has African American heritage. She and her boyfriend and his sister are the objects of a documentary called “New People” about mixed race younger people. To my mind she’s a pretty unlikeable character because she is completely self centered. She obsesses about race and rightness and uses race to beat people over the head, and she is loyal to no one but herself. She was adopted by a single black woman when she was 6 months old and was whiter than her mother wanted, but still Grace, her mother, seemed to give her all the love and guidance she needed. How did she end up this way? This book could be used to get people of different races talking with each other mainly because it points up our blind spots. I’ll be thinking about it for a while.

New People by Senna Danzy is a 2017 Riverhead Books publication.

Unconventional, a little disturbing, but thought provoking and exceptionally written-

Despite its brevity, this book packs a potent punch, written in a quirky, offbeat prose, that captured my attention and forced me to stay focused.

The novel is, without a doubt, about race. ‘New People’ meaning ‘biracial'. However, there is more to the story than meets the eye.

Maria and her fiancé Khalil are both biracial- Maria’s adoptive mother was black, but Maria is very fair skinned, as is Khalil, whose background is eclectic.

Maria is doing her dissertation on the ‘Jonestown Massacre’, while planning her wedding. But, her relationship with Khalil is tested when she develops a crush on a poet, who is not biracial. Suddenly, her stable life becomes very erratic as she searches for that elusive something that remains just out of reach.

The book is almost satirical at times, has a wry sense of humor, but is also very tense. Maria has a dark secret she’s kept from Khalil and she practically stalks her ‘crush’, as well as exhibiting a few other very odd behaviors that had me sitting on the edge of my seat.

Maria is the prominent character, the one whose narrative we follow as she sends herself down a path of self-discovery, a very risky journey that could upend her life as she knows it. She is a most unusual person, not necessarily a likeable young lady, or someone I felt I could bond with or feel empathy towards, but I found her choices almost hypnotic. At times I couldn’t bear to watch and at others I couldn’t bear to look away. I had to see what, if any, consequences or repercussions there would be for her actions.

The Jonestown topic runs in the background as it harkens back to the themes that brought the cult followers to such a point in their lives and is juxtaposed against the attitudes that came about in the nineties, especially in campus life. It’s an interesting force in Maria’s search for her own identity.

The ending is a bit abrupt. Khalil appears oblivious to Maria’s angst or past sins, so we are left to wonder if Maria’s thirst has been quenched or if her search will continue or evolve to include her fiancé.

I found Maria to be one of the most interesting characters I’ve been introduced to recently and this book did make me stop and think about many of the topics addressed here, even days after finishing the novel.

I enjoyed the style of writing, and the refreshing change of pace this book provided. This is my first book by this author, but I will definitely keep an eye out for her work in the future.

4 stars

This is an uncomfortable book.

You know those tv shows where people are doing things so... not right, embarrassing, just wrong, that you can't stand to watch it?

because it's a book, we can get closer. we can see each little mental step Maria takes that leads down this awkward road. We're uncomfortable because she's uncomfortable and she doesn't know any way out of it.

The author's parents, both writers, but her mother a white woman from Boston and her father an African American man originally from the south, married in 1968. The marriage dissolved as the author's father became abusive and alcoholic. Senna's mother's family, Boston bluebloods, have a well-publicized history, but her father's history, and the roots of his frustration, are a mystery to her until she explores them as an adult. The book is touching and well-written, but it seemed to me the author didn't learn enough to really flexh out the social context well. I still felt rather mystified at the end.

This novel left me speechless and emotional. As a mom of of biracial daughter it moved me on levels that are quite obvious but pushed me to think about things that are all too personal to me. Definitely worth reading. Any one who is interested in the complexities of race relations, self-identity, and the personal connections. I want more! So much more.

One of my favorite books of all time--tied for second place with She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb. This convincing, contemporary "coming of age" story about a girl who is technically both "black" and "white" will draw you in and prompt you to think critically about the idea of "race." Narrated from the perspective of a strong girl who doesn't play the victim of race wars but rather wishes she could, I left this novel with contentment rather than outrage for the injustices committed by "the white man" like I usually do!
I LOVE this novel and could read it again and again. I laughed and cried throughout.

what a terrific journey! I couldn't put this book down and at the same time didn't want it to end.

A stunning look into the life of a young mixed-race girl as she tries to find her place in her family, the world, and within herself. Set in the 1970s and early 80s, Birdie's journey from 8 year old girl to 15 year old young woman, growing up in a highly politicized household is an extraordinarily candid look at both what race is as well as realizing that race is nothing but a society constructed idea. Beautifully executed, Senna's characters are human and flawed in a way that makes them identifiable and empathetic, even when it is sometimes difficult to like them.

I know I’ve read a great book when I can’t stop thinking about it. Initially, this book captured my interest because I share some similar history. As an African American teenager living in Cambridge during the 70s, I remember that exciting and passionate time of Black Power and revolution.

The characters in this book are so well made; I could pick them out in a crowd. Between Deck and Sandy Lee, we get an excellent sense of the jumble of idealism, didactic bravado, conflicting and overlapping ideologies, and drama of people trying to understand themselves as individuals and members of a troubled society. Unfortunately, their daughters get lost in the shuffle. The parents seem to forget that their daughters are kids and not just part of some noble experiment. Through younger daughter Birdie’s eyes, we see the larger implications of ashy knees and hair that won’t stay in cornrows while the sisters struggle with their identities and a place to belong as racially mixed children.
Senna puts the Lee family in an unusual situation and we watch what happens. Radical mom goes undercover to escape the CIA and takes Birdie, the white looking daughter, with her because they are a color match. Birdie, who worked so hard to fit in as black kid must now pass for white.
This book puts a human face to abstract issues of race and class. We feel everything through Birdie. As our country limps along, trying not to deal with race and class—our most crippling issues—works of fiction like Caucasia can help us get into the heads of others and begin to understand what it’s like.

This is not my normal fare - I usually like my novels light and flaky. It came highly recommended however, and I found myself very quickly drawn in by the story and the characters. I enjoyed it very much. The end felt a little abrupt, but even that seemed to fit with the overall theme of seeking to find ways to define race and reality.

Recommended by: Anne R.

Books Read in the Past:

A sometimes-entertaining, sometimes-wrenching novel about race in America, as enacted by two biracial sisters with different skin color, one of whom appears more white, the other of whom, more black. Issues of identity, group membership, alienation, and family arise in a novel that is also about the tension between how people understand themselves and others.

A heartwarming story about a biracial coming of age girl (Birdie) growing up in the 70's. I found the parents to be very dysfunctional and obsessed with race. Very powerful story about a biracial girl looking for her identity and place in society. Good read!

I raced through this book--I was pretty immediately drawn in and couldn't put it down. I could strongly relate to the horror of Birdie's having to grow up as a liar, because she can not tell the truth (of her biracial heritage) for her family's safety. This seems a weird aspect of the book to grab me perhaps but I know what it is like to grow up with something about yourself that you can not tell other people and how that stops you from developing real relationships or trusting any relationships that you do develop. There are lots of other horrors in the book and her story illustrates well issues of racism in America. Her characterization is not that subtle...but it feels very real nonetheless, like an autobiography.

Birdie appears white, like her mother, but her sister appears black, like their father. Birdie's parents split up, each taking the daughter that appears most like them, and do not communicate with each other.

I've read an array of texts featuring caucasian and African-American heroines, but never a biracial heroine with a story this compelling. Students can enjoy a plot-driven book, embedded with questions of morality and racism.

I wanted the ending to turn out different than it did. One frustrating book.