Danzy Senna

Danzy Senna (born 1970) is an American novelist and essayist. Her first work, Caucasia (1998), has been translated into ten languages and has won multiple awards. The winner of a Whiting Award, Senna is the author of two novels, a memoir, and a short-story collection, along with numerous essays centering on issues of identity, motherhood, gender and race. Her work has appeared in a range of publications, including The New Yorker, Vogue and the New York Times.[1][2]

Early life and education

Danzy Senna was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the middle of three children. Her mother is the poet and novelist, Fanny Howe, and her father is an African-American scholar, Carl Senna, author of The Black Press and the Struggle for Civil Rights and The Fallacy of I.Q.[3]

Senna attended earned her B.A. from Stanford University and an MFA in creative writing from University of California, Irvine.

Works

Caucasia

Senna's first novel, Caucasia (1998), received the Book of the Month Club's Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, was nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and won the Alex Award from the American Library Association.[4] The novel was also a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was named a Los Angeles Times "Best Book of the Year".[4] Caucasia, a national bestseller, has been translated into ten languages. Caucasia is narrated by a young biracial girl, Birdie Lee, who is taken into the political underground by her mother, and forced to live under an assumed identity. The coming of age story follows Birdie's struggle for identity and her search for the missing parts of her family.[5]

Symptomatic

Her second novel, Symptomatic (2004), is a psychological thriller narrated by an unnamed young woman who moves to New York City for what promises to be a dream job – a prestigious fellowship writing for a respected magazine. The narrator feels displaced, however, and is unsure of how she fits into the world around her. She becomes the object of an older woman's attention after they bond over their similarly mixed heritage. As the older woman's interest turns into obsession, the narrator must figure out what their relationship means to her, even as both of their lives seem to spiral out of control.

Where Did You Sleep Last Night?

As a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers,[6] Senna researched and wrote the autobiographical work, Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History (2009). She recounts the story of her parents, who married in 1968. Their marriage was opposed by some family members and friends as the two American writers came from wildly divergent backgrounds. Her mother was a white woman with a blue-blood Bostonian lineage. Her father was a black man, the son of a single mother and an unknown father. When their marriage disintegrated eight years later, one family friend called it “the ugliest divorce in Boston’s history.” Decades later, Senna looked back not only at her parents’ divorce, but at the family histories they tried so hard to overcome. Her often painful journey through the past is epitomized by the question posed to her as a young child by her father: "Don’t you know who I am?".[7]

You Are Free

Senna's short story collection, You Are Free (2011), was described by Kirkus Review as, "Deft, revealing stories [from] a writer for our time...a fresh, insightful look into being young, smart and biracial in postmillennial America."[8] In the title story, a woman’s strange correspondence with a girl claiming to be her daughter leads her into the doubts and what-ifs of the life she hasn’t lived. In "The Care of the Self," a new mother hosts an old friend, still single, and discovers how each of them pities and envies the other. In the collection's first story, "Admission," tensions arise between a liberal husband and wife after their son is admitted into the elite daycare school to which they’d applied only on a lark.[8][9][10]

Awards

Books

Personal life

Senna lives in Los Angeles, California with her two sons.[12]

References

  1. ↑ "Bringing Down Bébé: How One Mother Mistakenly Hoped a Year in Paris Would Transform Her Sons". Vogue. Retrieved 2015-11-20.
  2. ↑ ""Oreo" by Fran Ross Is an Overlooked Classic About Race". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2015-11-20.
  3. ↑ Touger, Rebecca (2009). "Interview: Danzy Senna". Smith Magazine. MagSMITH. Retrieved 14 April 2012.
  4. 1 2 PBS Program Club (2003). "Matters of Race: Writer bibliographies". Pbs.org. PBS. Retrieved 14 April 2012.
  5. ↑ "Danzy Senna - Caucasia". danzysenna.com. Retrieved 2015-08-11.
  6. ↑ New York Public Library (2012). "Special Invitation: Danzy Senna in conversation with Rebecca Walker". Nypl.org. New York Public Library. Retrieved 14 April 2012.
  7. ↑ Matthews, David (6 August 2009). "Sunday Book Review: Searching for Father". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 April 2012.
  8. 1 2 Smith, Zadie (September 2011). "New Books: You Are Free". Harper's. Harper's Foundation. 323 (1,936): 73–76. Retrieved 31 May 2012.(subscription required)
  9. ↑ Rosenwaike, Polly (2011-05-06). "Book Review - You Are Free - By Danzy Senna". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2015-11-20.
  10. ↑ Bausch, Richard. "The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction | W. W. Norton & Company". Retrieved 2015-11-20.
  11. ↑ "Danzy Senna". danzysenna.com. Retrieved 2015-08-10.
  12. ↑ "Danzy Senna". danzysenna.com. Retrieved 2015-08-06.

External links

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