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Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History (2009) deals with Senna’s enigmatic father, the power and failure of her parents’ union and, finally, the forces of history.

Danzy Senna, born in Boston, Massachusetts, is the daughter of author Carl Senna (The Black Press and the Struggle for Civil Rights), an African Mexican poet from a struggling single-parent household, and Fanny Howe, an Irish American poet and novelist born into privilege. They met and married while both were activists during the American Civil Rights Movement. Danzy Senna received her B.A. from Stanford University and her M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, where she received several creative writing awards. Her first novel, Caucasia (1998), received the Book-of-the-Month Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction. It also received the Alex Award from the American Library Association, as well as praise from The New York Times and Newsweek — the former called it “haunting and deeply intelligent” and the latter describing its “impressive beauty and power.” Senna lives in Los Angeles with her husband, novelist Percival Everett.