Identity Crisis In Caucasia By Danzy Senna

When Birdie and her sister are sent to Nkrumah, Birdie is taught to recognize and accept her “black” identity. However, her identity is problematized by her physical appearance, especially her “white” skin colour. Living in Boston, Birdie feels that she does not belong to the black community; in Nkrumah students don’t accept her for being a black girl, then she further feels isolated by her dad’s girlfriend, because she is not dark like Cole. “Others before had made me see the differences between my sister and myself – the texture of our hair, the tings of our kin, the shapes of our features. But Carmen was the one to make me feel that those things somehow mattered. To make me feel that the differences were deeper than skin,” (Senna, 1998, p.91). The students are not the only ones who make Birdie feel as if she doesn’t fit in; Carmen makes her feel as if inferior because of her lighter complexion.

Characters, in Heidi Durrow’s The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, force the protagonist, Rachel, to choose between her white and black side. They only acknowledge her black side while only celebrating her white qualities. Consequently, Rachel feels the obligation to accept the roles that have been thrust upon her and ignores part of her race because of the commentary from her family and peers. Rachel adapting to the portrayal of her racial identity to appeal to the normalized opinions of her appearance, demonstrates her tendency to comply with the categorization people of color face throughout society. Ultimately, leading Rachel to pick and choose the parts of her racial identity that most please the people she is with.

In 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man was anonymously published by James Weldon Johnson. It is the narrative of a light-skinned man wedged between two racial categories; the offspring of a white father and a black mother, The Ex-Colored man is visibly white but legally classified as black. Wedged between these two racial categories, the man chooses to “pass” to the white society. In Passing: When People Can’t Be Who They Are, Brooke Kroeger describes “passing” as an act when “people effectively present themselves as other than who they understand themselves to be” (Kroeger 7). The Ex-Colored Man’s choice to ultimately “pass” at the end of the novel has been the cause of controversy amongst readers. Many claim his choice to “pass”

No one is you and that is your power. In the novel, Mexican Whiteboy by Matt De La Peña, the main character, Danny, fails to realize this fact. He alway feels the need to change who he is. He wants to feel welcomed by his father’s Mexican family during the summer when he moves to San Diego County. However, he finds this complicating to do since he is Half-Mexican and Half-White. In this novel, we view a variety of ways Danny struggles with his identity and one way he comes to terms with his struggles.

Imagine finding out that your entire life was a lie, and that every single thing you knew about your identity and your family was completely false! Armand Aubigny, one of the main characters in Desiree’s Baby by Kate Chopin, experiences this exact dilemma throughout this short story. Desiree’s Baby is a story about a young man and woman, who fall in love, but Desiree, who does not know her birth parents, is considered nameless. When she and Armand have a child, they are both very surprised because the child’s skin color is not white as expected. It is obvious that the child is biracial, and immediately, Desiree is blamed for the color of the child’s skin because of her uncertain background. The truth, however, is that it is Armand who has

“Passing,” by Nella Larsen is a novel all about pretending to be something that you are not. It is about giving everyone the impression that everything is in order when in reality everything is falling apart. Passing in this novel refers to the ability of a person to be classified as one thing, normally a social group, while belonging to a different group. Passing is usually done to gain class or acceptance by groups other than one’s own. The primary focus of the novel is on racial passing which is the ability to look white and belong to a white group when in reality the person is an African-American in order to gain privileges that were unavailable to them. Although racial passing is the main focus, another major theme in this novel is sexual passing and identity.

Throughout history, different people have many struggles with their identity and trying to figure out who they are. When I was younger, I struggled with my identity and who I was to my family and my friends. I did not know how to be myself without being called names or being looked at funny. At the house I would act one way towards my parents and my siblings, and at school I would act differently towards my friends to fit in. This time period of my life is well conveyed throughout different characters in many books. Harper Lee demonstrates the struggle of identity greatly in the book To Kill a Mockingbird. Throughout the novel, the author develops two characters, Calpurnia and Dolphus Raymond, that struggle with their identity to

James McBride can tell you firsthand about man verse racial identity. Journalizing his experience in his New York Times Bestseller novel the Color of Water simply outlined his struggles of finding who he was. His upbringing included a black father and a Jewish white mother. His background made it hard for him to understand why his home was different than others on the street. Although McBride experience shows an older outtake of racial identity, some may say this still is a problem today. Offspring feels the need to pick a race in society to succeed in the generation and it may be the step to understands them more. Notice in the subtitle of the book "A black Men tribute to his white mother" he label himself as just black as if there was a barrier between his mother and himself because the so different. Today we need to not let racial identity become a big part of our lives.

Identity can mean different things to different people, but for most people, it’s about one’s personality and experiences. The 21st century has seen young people in various parts of the globe have a preference for some desired identity, which they deem superior, rather than accept their own identities. For example, in Goin Gangsta, Choosin Cholista: Claiming Identity, Neil Bernstein makes a case on how a number of people have claimed ethnic individualities other than their own and this is not an evil obsession (Bernstein, 1995). In this essay, a girl named April and her friends (and by extension most young people) believe that “identity is not a matter of where you come from, what you were born into, or what colour your skin is, but it’s everything

Racial identity is an important concept that everyone must deal with in their life. It is an individual’s sense of having their identity be defined by belonging to a race and or ethnic group. How strong the identity is depending on how much the individual has processed and internalized the sociological, political, and other factors within the group. In some instances, people do not identify with their race and they will “pass” as another. Nella Larsen, an African American writer and prominent member of the Harlem Renaissance movement, she explores the consequences of “passing”. Larsen’s Passing is a novel that challenges the concept of ethnicity, race and gender while revolutionizing the idea of what we describe as identity. The novel explores the issue of race through vivid plotting that depicts a mentally touching story of affecting boundaries in the early American society. The novel also explores the effects of racial construction on a person through multiple levels. Through Larsen’s characterization and setting she is able to bring out the social construction of race in an enjoyable and educated format in which race, class distinction and identity themes are intertwined. Larsen herself often struggles with identity, as she grew up being raised by an all-white household after her father, a black West Indian, disappeared from her life. Larsen depicts the theme of racial identity by using two women characters, both of which are attractive, and are “light” enough to be able

The novel Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin includes the main character of a teenage girl named Yael who, as Graudin has told her audience, changes with the theme of identity along with her ability to skinshift, or shapeshift, which transforms her as she experiences the horrors of concentration camps and labs as well as the endurance and strain of somebody else's life. Before the main plot of the book, competing in the race, Yael was innocent and didn’t really know who she was. Essentially, this all started in the concentration camps when, after months of being tested on, Yael had woken up to find she wasn’t herself anymore and the one’s she loved most couldn’t see through her uncontrollable change. “‘What are you?’

Analysis Essay Carrie Ryan’s ,mystery novel, Daughter of Deep Silence (2016); develops the idea that experience and events creates your identity and losing it can be easy, but finding it again is hard. The author backs this claim up with the story of Frances Mace, who changed her identity after a tragic event. Frances witnessed a mass shooting and traded identity with her best friend; resulting in France's having to loose her true identity. The purpose in writing this book was to show how losing your individuality is necessary in order to get a higher understanding of who you really are. Ryan uses romance and a suspenseful tone to keep her audience reeled in, intending the audience are young adults.

The hardest part in revealing that you have a side that you hide from others is that people are afraid of the judgement they might receive once they show their true personality to those around them. This serves as a great problem not only for the author, but also those who live with her because hiding one’s true emotions can cause a great misunderstanding. It is also proven that during the time of the Holocaust, thousands of Jews were forced into hiding their true identities to protect their livelihood and family. One hides their character for the benefit of others.

Dambudzo Marechera writes of the insanity he feels as a result of his own desperate racial confusion and accompanying self hatred in Black Skin What Masks. In this story Marechera begins by placing the overall notion of discomfort that accompanies one’s skin being black on the same level as an unnamed friend. The description of the friend points very clearly to different levels of insanity while simultaneously, the reader’s attention is constantly being brought back to the point at hand, the issue of race. Ultimately, the main character’s (author’s) discomfort regarding his racial identity and his efforts to change that are displayed as a completely separate persona from

In Grier English classes, we have discussed about the change of identity in many different books, for example, Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Sometimes, the mental activities experienced by the characters that are facing great transformations resonate with our life. Within all of these books we read and suffered through with countless tests and projects, I find a very important lesson in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.