EUGENE–Novelist Danzy Senna, who achieved national recognition last year for her portrayal of a family’s struggle with issues of race, will inaugurate the 2000 Program in Creative Writing Reading Series with a free public reading at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 13.

Following the reading in Room 123 of Pacific Hall, 1210 Franklin Blvd. at the University of Oregon, the author will sign copies of her best-selling novel, "Caucasia." The series, which is co-sponsored by the Oregon Humanities Center and the Center for the Study of Women in Society, continues through May 18 when landscape writer Barry Lopez will give a reading.

Senna is a "hugely gifted writer," the Washington Post Book World said. New York Times reviewer Margo Jefferson wrote that "Caucasia" is "a haunting and deeply intelligent first novel."

A probing exploration of a biracial family as well as a coming-of-age novel, "Caucasia" is told from the viewpoint of Birdie, a young girl whose mother is white and father is black. The book examines her attempts to straddle the racial divide. Ms. Magazine calls the book "a finely nuanced story that explores the matter of race through the eyes and heart of another white black girl."

Growing up in a biracial family herself, Senna says that "the contradictions in my family were always apparent to me: the unlikely mix of WASP and African-American, privileged and poor, literary and activist. But it was the contradictions in my own life that most confounded me: the experience of ‘looking white’ and identifying as black.

"My mother, a white poet and novelist, and my father, a black scholar of race and history, were both smitten with the black power politics of the 1960s and ‘70s, and believed that a strong black identity was the way to help my siblings and me survive the racism of the world," Senna continues. "But while for my sister, the black power chants seemed to fit in with her skin and hair, for me, my Afrocentric proclamations were met with mostly confusion and sometimes derision from the outside world."

It is from this background that Senna launched into writing "Caucasia," a smart and heartfelt look at the life of a girl caught between two worlds.

For more information, call Debra Gwartney, assistant director of the UO Creative Writing Program, (541) 346-0544, or send e-mail to gwartney@oregon.uoregon.edu.

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