SOURCE: A review of Caucasia, in Essence, Vol. 28, No. 11, March, 1998, p. 66.

[In the following review, Funderberg praises the narrative voice of Senna's Caucasia.]

This month two first-time novelists view life through the prism of the not-so-tragic mulatto. First, Danzy Senna makes a stunning debut with Caucasia. In her engrossing tale, two sisters growing up in Boston are so close that they share a secret language, Elemeno, named after their favorite letters in the alphabet. But they don't share skin color or hair texture, and so when their parents' interracial marriage breaks up, Birdie, the light one, goes with their White mother; Cole, the older, darker sister, goes with their Black father. Senna finds a perfect-pitch voice for Birdie that blends innocence, wry humor and straight-out pain. The second book, Lady Moses, by Lucinda Roy, is the epic tale of Jacinta Louise Buttercup Moses, the London-raised daughter of a...