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Invisibility in the Intersectional Ecology: Danzy Senna’s Caucasia
Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (starting 2013), Department of Language, Literature and Intercultural Studies (from 2013).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-8751-3575
2021 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation only (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

In Danzy Senna’s novel, Caucasia, Cole Lee tells her younger sister Birdie about this imaginary place called Elemeno. The people of Elemeno “were a shifting people, constantly changing their form, color, pattern, in a quest for invisibility … their changing routine was a serious matter – less a game of make-believe than a fight for the survival of their species” (7). What Cole is implying is that they could be like the Elemeno people. Elemeno becomes a nodal point where the sisters escape from their polarized reality. Cole and Birdie are mixed race, their different looks separate their gender experiences, and their parents’ different class backgrounds and realities affect them. Cole, who looks like their African American father, is accepted in their father’s community, but Birdie, who is lighter with European features inherited from her mother, has a more challenging time dealing with the power dynamics she meets in the real world. Since the reader follows Birdie, the merging of the space of Elemeno and the textual real world encourages a reading that questions how privilege, advantage, disadvantage, and systemically formed stereotypes affect visibility. More specifically, the aim is to use an intersectional perspective to show how the space of Elemeno, while challenging power dynamics, at the same time enforces them when merged with the textual real world, which consequently makes Birdie invisible.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2021.
Keywords [en]
Intersectionality, Danzy Senna, Caucasia, Elemeno, Power Dynamics
National Category
Languages and Literature
Research subject
English
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-87196OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kau-87196DiVA, id: diva2:1611805
Conference
The 2021 Society for the Study of American Women Writers Triennial Conference, Baltimore, USA, November 4 - 7, 2021
Available from: 2021-11-16 Created: 2021-11-16 Last updated: 2022-02-24Bibliographically approved

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Katinić, Zdravka

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • apa.csl
  • Other style
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Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
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  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf