Analysis Of Birdie Lee

People come to being on the road for countless reasons and though there is no real certainty on the road, there are two things that are certain, the road stands in opposition to home and your race and ethnicity plays a major role on the trajectory and the way others treat you on the journey. African Americans have an especially strong connection to road narratives. This is because, from the beginning, the race’s presence in America was brought by forcing them on to the road against their will. It is for this reason that there are countless narratives, fictional and non-fictional, of black peoples on the road. For Birdie Lee, a literary character, the beginning of the road marks the end of her comfortable home life and the beginning of her racial

She described seeing herself as a reflection of her sister even before they had mirrors; she thought they were the same. As she began to experience outside socialization and public schooling she became more aware of the way people outside her family viewed her in respect to race, and began dressing and acting more “black” in order to be treated the way she felt she should be. From a young age she felt a special connection to her ethnicity, the culture and especially the music of her father’s ancestors. As their family began to fall apart, Birdie and her sister, Cole, would drown out the racial slurs their parents blurted at each other by playing in a made up

Ultimately separating the sisters by race. Birdie’s mother Sandy becomes focused on her mysterious project in the basement, and her father begins dating another woman. Birdie begins to see the world as separately white and black. For this reason, Sandy, Biride’s mother and her family are the mold for whites and conversely, her father Deck Lee and his family is her mold for blacks. To Birdie, Sandy and the road are intertwined, it is because of her mother that she is separated from her sister and father. Leaving her with only a box of “negrobilia” to remember them by. This in turn causes Birdie to romanticize her father and her African ancestry, but as the years pass, her father, sister and ethnicity begin to fade from her memory and the box that her father gave her before they split up becomes more random and scattered as the years go on. In order to appease her mother and remain ‘safe’ from the feds, Birdie becomes Jesse, a fictitious identity she takes in New Hampshire. And despite the fact that she always remembered her father and sister fondly, she felt neglected by them and therefore she began to neglect part of her race. While in New Hampshire Birdie begins to fully emerge into her Jewish girl Jesse persona, and is preoccupied with impressing a popular white girl at school, and even goes as far as to mock a biracial girl who she attends school with. Yet, even under