Racing the Biracial Body: Biracial Performativity and Interpretation in 'Pinky' and 'Caucasia'

In traditional passing narratives, the protagonist was always thought to be authentically black because of her one drop of black blood. The idea of passing relied on the notion that there was an authentic racial self that one was concealing. The mulatta represents assimilation, the end of blackness, and the end of the discussion on racism. Elia Kazan's 1949 "problem film" Pinky, based on the novel Quality, in many ways embodies the traditional passing narrative. Danzy Senna's 1998 novel Caucasia, on the other hand, acts as both a testimony of the lived experiences of being multiracial and critique of the rigidity of racial categories in the United States. Senna argues that race is more performative than biological. By centering on a racially mixed young woman and her family, Caucasia complicates and deconstructs the black/white binary and challenges multicultural theory.