You Are Free

March 28, 2011
Senna (Caucasia) moves into short fiction with a mixed bag of eight stories dealing with race, identity, and motherhood. Though the protagonists are largely defined by race and gender, the issues they grapple with are diverse: an inner conflict over whether to send a child to private or public school; a lonely woman's decision to be cruel to a stray dog; the emotional fallout from a neighbor's divorce. One of her longest stories, "The Care of the Self," is also one of the most memorable. It begins with the reunion of two close friends whose lives have taken radically different paths. Livy always played the comically tragic single sidekick to Ramona, whose life was the picture of connubial bliss. Now in seemingly opposite positions, with Ramona divorced and Livy a happily married mother, it becomes increasingly obvious that the image people project of their lives is not always accurate. This collection plays to Senna's strength at portraying mixed-race identity with subtlety and grace. Though the pathos and poignancy sometimes strains credibility, Senna excels at conveying emotion with a powerful restraint.

March 1, 2011

Deft, revealing stories about young interracial women struggling for self-identity in an increasingly mixed culture, frequently in the company of men who have little interest in questioning the things they do.

A writer for our time, Senna (Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History, 2009, etc.) draws openly upon her life as the beautiful light-skinned daughter of an African American father and white Irish-American mother (both of whom are writers and activists). This book rises to even greater heights than Senna's 1998 novel Caucasia in probing the variously disappointing but still hopeful lives of striving young women, most boasting babies, troubled friends and detached husbands. Livy, a Brooklyn artist living with a gallery owner in Santa Fe, mourns the loss of her old unsettled self after a divorced New York friend visits her. Cassie, a playwright from Rhode Island temporarily living in Los Angeles with her artist husband, obsesses over the ultra-exclusive and ultra-expensive preschool to which their child has miraculously been accepted. Jackie, daughter of a black saxophonist and white singer—"the missing link between Sicily and Libya"—withdraws into a strange existence with an abandoned dog after being dumped by a black boyfriend who is against race-mixing. Lara, a New Yorker who writes for The Charitable American magazine, questions her outlook after meeting with a downtrodden young woman who claims she is her daughter. With the exception of a story told nearly verbatim three times, each with altered details and viewpoints, Senna writes with effortless control and surpassing understanding of her characters' tics and neurotic tendencies. Employing the issue of racial identity as a leitmotif, she creates stories whose interconnections hum. Now that we have an interracial president, the issues faced by people of mixed heritage are getting more attention. With humor and honest emotion, Senna educates us on what it means to be mistaken for white, or black, and the presumptions that go with those mistakes.         

A fresh, insightful look into being young, smart and biracial in postmillennial America.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 1, 2011

Senna (Caucasia) continues her exploration of mixed-race America in this collection. In "There, There," the narrator is reworking her second novel, trying to find something redemptive in the work her editor called too dark and depressing. This pretty well defines Senna's task in these stories, looking for redemption in fairly bleak lives with varying degrees of success. All the stories are written in the first person and have mixed-race female narrators, many of whom struggle with mixed-race men. In "Admission," a successful young artistic couple visit an exclusive preschool as research for the play the wife is writing and then find themselves hounded by the admissions officer, who can't believe they've turned the school down. In the title story, a woman is contacted by another believing to be the daughter she gave up for adoption and wonders if it's possible the appendectomy she remembers from her childhood was actually something else. VERDICT Almost requiring discussion, the stories would work well for book clubs. If you like your fiction with a bit of a challenge, this collection is for you.--Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati State Technical & Community Coll. Lib.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2011
Acclaimed memoirist and fiction writer Senna presents eight compelling stories about female protagonists exploring the nature of self-identity, race, and relationships. In Admission, a playwright applies to an exclusive private school as part of her research, then feels conflicted when her son is accepted. In the title story, Lara, a 33-year-old New Yorker, is contacted by a young woman claiming to be her daughter. Though it is impossible that Lara is anyones mother, the correspondence propels her to reconsider her life. The Care of the Self finds Livy, a New Mexico transplant, awaiting the visit of her longtime friend Ramona. Once a freewheeling singleton, Livy is now settled with a husband and baby, while Ramona struggles with her new life as a divorc'e. Livy and Ramona subtly confront their role reversal and contemplate the decisions theyve made. In The Land of Beulah, a young woman, despondent over a recent breakup, diverts her attention, and neurosis, to a stray dog. Sennas fluid, assured tales address true-to-life questions and navigate universal conundrums.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2011

Deft, revealing stories about young interracial women struggling for self-identity in an increasingly mixed culture, frequently in the company of men who have little interest in questioning the things they do.

A writer for our time, Senna (Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History, 2009, etc.) draws openly upon her life as the beautiful light-skinned daughter of an African American father and white Irish-American mother (both of whom are writers and activists). This book rises to even greater heights than Senna's 1998 novel Caucasia in probing the variously disappointing but still hopeful lives of striving young women, most boasting babies, troubled friends and detached husbands. Livy, a Brooklyn artist living with a gallery owner in Santa Fe, mourns the loss of her old unsettled self after a divorced New York friend visits her. Cassie, a playwright from Rhode Island temporarily living in Los Angeles with her artist husband, obsesses over the ultra-exclusive and ultra-expensive preschool to which their child has miraculously been accepted. Jackie, daughter of a black saxophonist and white singer--"the missing link between Sicily and Libya"--withdraws into a strange existence with an abandoned dog after being dumped by a black boyfriend who is against race-mixing. Lara, a New Yorker who writes for The Charitable American magazine, questions her outlook after meeting with a downtrodden young woman who claims she is her daughter. With the exception of a story told nearly verbatim three times, each with altered details and viewpoints, Senna writes with effortless control and surpassing understanding of her characters' tics and neurotic tendencies. Employing the issue of racial identity as a leitmotif, she creates stories whose interconnections hum. Now that we have an interracial president, the issues faced by people of mixed heritage are getting more attention. With humor and honest emotion, Senna educates us on what it means to be mistaken for white, or black, and the presumptions that go with those mistakes.

A fresh, insightful look into being young, smart and biracial in postmillennial America.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)