Caucasia

Cole, named after the French writer Colette, is Birdie’s older sister. The novel spans Cole’s life from age 11 to 18. Birdie describes Cole being: “cinnamon-skinned, curly-haired, [and] serious” (5), her eyes “the color of sea glass, forever shifting between blue, green, and gray” (42). Even though Cole is mixed-race like Birdie, both parents see her as black. Deck is comfortable around Cole, as is his African-American girlfriend, Carmen. When Cole enters Nkrumah, she is frustrated because Sandy cannot braid her hair. She says: “Mum doesn’t know anything about raising a black child. She just doesn’t” (52). Cole reads Ebony magazine to learn how to talk and act black, and asks her father for the money to get her hair professionally braided (54).

When Sandy has to go on the run, they decide that Deck and Carmen will take Cole to Brazil because the three of them will blend in and look like a family. In the end, it turns out that Cole and her father do not have much in common. He tells Birdie: “And wouldn’t you know it? Cole turned out to be as different from me as any child could be” (394). Ironically, Deck assumed that Cole would have more in common with him because of her blackness. Cole is upset that Sandy separated her from Birdie, but unlike Birdie, Cole was able to move on and carve out a life for herself not based on others’ expectations.

Sandy is Birdie and Cole’s white mother. She is married to Deck Lee, but they separate early in the novel. Birdie describes Sandy as “big and solid, with a rope of blond hair swinging between her broad shoulders” (21). When Deck is angry at her, he calls her a “walking, talking marshmallow” (21). Sandy’s personality is brash, and she is passionate about her activism. She shoulders many responsibilities; caring for her daughters after she and Deck split up, teaching dyslexic children, and carrying on her activism. Social justice is Sandy’s primary motivator. Until she goes on the run, everything she does is in service of helping someone else.

Sandy is from a Wasp family in Boston who can trace their ancestry back to Cotton Mather (99). She rebelled from that world when she married Deck, living and working in the black community, but after she leaves Boston and becomes Sheila Goldman, she shifts back to her white-centered identity. Sandy’s desire to go into hiding and change her identity reveals a subtext of regret for the life she lived in Boston. Throughout the novel, Sandy’s friends and family differ on whether she was ever in danger of arrest by Cointelpro. The text hints that Sandy may be paranoid or have another psychiatric condition based on her erratic behavior, but never confirms it. Neither does the text come down on either side of the argument about Sandy’s safety.

Deck Lee is Birdie and Cole’s father. He is an African-American intellectual with a graduate degree from Harvard. He does not share Sandy’s zeal for Black Power activism; he deconstructs America’s racist power structure through scholarship. Deck married Sandy because he admired her fearlessness (229), but now he seems to resent Sandy for being white and resents himself for having half-white children. Birdie notes that Deck is more comfortable with Cole than with her: “Cole was his proof that he had indeed survived the integrationist shuffle” (55-56).

Confusion about where Deck fits into America’s racialized society motivates his obsessive research on race theory. In 1963, he was an African-American graduate student at Harvard, which means he learned to excel in the white world of academia. He learned his revolutionary politics from his mother, who studied Russian and dreamed of moving to Moscow (101). Birdie describes him as “mad and brilliant” (393) when Deck shows her the new charts and manuscripts for his book. The novel focuses on Sandy’s paranoia, but Deck’s scholarly obsession borders on mania. He is always working on books that he never finishes, and planning new experiments. His scholarship is a buffer between himself and the real world. At the end of the novel, when Birdie tries to convey the pain of her experience in New Hampshire, Deck reverts to his professorial mode to avoid confronting his past.

Dot is Deck’s sister and Birdie and Cole’s aunt. Birdie says:

Dot was my father’s younger sister and my favorite grown-up. She was two shades darker than my father, a cool, rich brown verging on black, with no breasts to speak of, long legs, and a gap between her two front teeth. She liked to dress like a boy, in overalls or low-slung blue jeans, and wore her hair in a short, neat natural (8).

Birdie takes after Dot’s boyish figure and style, even if she does not racially resemble Dot.

Unlike Birdie’s parents, Dot is not involved in activism. She leaves for India in Chapter 1 to seek spiritual enlightenment. When Birdie visits her in Boston toward the end of the novel, Dot explains why she left: “I knew my people were screwed and I wanted to get as far away from them as I possibly could. Seems so evil. But that’s the way I felt” (313). Dot did not let her race determine her life path. She found the enlightenment she was looking for in India but returned because she felt homesick (314). Her three-year-old daughter Taj is the child of a liaison with her Indian spiritual teacher. When Birdie stays with Dot, Taj wants her to stay, possibly seeing in Birdie a resemblance to herself. Dot’s spirituality provides an alternative to the otherwise black-and-white world in the novel. Dot’s friends from her spiritual center come from a multitude of backgrounds and her view on race is that “people just look different” (320); the only differences that matter are spiritual ones.

Dot does not believe that Sandy was ever in danger from the FBI. Rather, she believes Sandy is running from herself, which means that she will be running forever. In the end, Dot represents freedom of choice because she does not let circumstances determine her life’s course. She can be a role model for Birdie on how to move forward rather than letting the past consume her.

Jim Campbell is the man Sandy begins dating in New Hampshire under her assumed identity of Sheila Goldman. Sandy meets him in a local bar. Birdie says he looks like Kenny Rogers, only thinner (177). Jim is easy-going, works with computers, and used to live in Jamaica. As his relationship with Sheila/Sandy progresses, he tries to connect with Jesse/Birdie, who resists his attempts to become a father figure. Little by little he becomes an important part of Sandy’s and Birdie’s lives as he fixes up their cottage, supports them financially, and eventually moves in. He tutors Birdie in math and science, which she grudgingly admits was helpful (254).

Jim’s most significant traits are his loyalty to Sandy and his desire to become a father figure to Birdie. Sandy’s relationship with Jim tests her resolve to keep her identity hidden. The more reliable he proves himself to be, the more difficult it is for Sandy to keep him at arm’s length. To Birdie, Jim represents yet another father figure. She has her real father, Deck; her imaginary father, David; and her substitute father, Jim. Each of these fathers represents a different side of Birdie’s ethnicity—including her fake Jewishness. Birdie is uncomfortable with her mother dating a white man for the same reason she is uncomfortable losing her virginity to a white boy: She feels that both cases signify the erasure of her black self. Part of the reason Birdie flees New Hampshire is that she can see her mother building a life with Jim that she wants Birdie to be part of. Even though Jim knows the truth about Birdie and her mother, if Jim becomes her father, Birdie feels that it will make her white identity official.  

Walter and Libby Marsh are the older, wealthy New Hampshire couple who rents their cottage to Sandy when she moves into town as Sheila Goldman. The Marshes accept Sandy despite her questionable circumstances because they recognize her Wasp breeding and therefore trust her. Their son is Nicholas, a 16-year-old who studies at Exeter boarding school. He befriends Birdie (as Jesse) and they begin a tentative relationship. The Marshes represent the Waspy-ness Sandy was trying to escape, but Birdie finds their demure, upper-class lifestyle fascinating. As time goes by, the Marshes become suspicious of Sheila and Jesse, with Libby saying: “They’re a funny pair, but they both just reek of class” (193). Owing to Sandy’s blue-blood upbringing, the Marshes will always give “Sheila” the benefit of the doubt. Birdie enjoys feeling like they recognize her as one of their own, and this further complicates Birdie’s sense of belonging.