Caucasia

Birdie begins eighth grade at the local school. Just as at Nkrumah, she learns to fit in with the popular girls, changing her hair and style to mimic those around her: “I wore Nikes, Jordache jeans, and a fluffy pink angora sweater with silver sparkles sewn in. Mona’s mother had cut my hair into layers so that it feathered around my face” (234). There’s no real insight into how Birdie feels about these changes. She seems happy to fit in and at this point does not feel that her change is a betrayal of the person she was before.

Two major plot points occur in this chapter. The first is that Birdie goes through a bag of her mother’s things and finds a postcard from her aunt Dot, who returned from India and is living in Boston. Birdie wonders why her mother did not tell her about the postcard. She feels betrayed because this is the first secret her mother has kept from her.

The second major plot point in the chapter is Birdie’s encounter with Samantha Taper, a mixed-race girl at her school. When Birdie asks about her, Mona says: “She just moved here last year from Maine.