Mixed Race Studies

Jackie Kay’s Quest For Her Roots – Theresa Muñoz

Scottish Review of Books
Volume 6, Issue 3 (2010-08-12)

Theresa Muñoz

Adopted at birth, Jackie Kay discovered neither of her birth parents were who she’d thought they’d be, her new memoir recalls.

“If you have skin my colour” writes Jackie Kay in her memoir Red Dust Road, “you must be a foreigner.” All of her life, people have asked her where she is from. Glasgow, she’d tell them. Then people would inquire, but where are her parents from? Her parents are from Glasgow and Fife, she’d say. But she would also add that she’s adopted and her birth father is Nigerian. “They’d nod,” Kay says, “with a kind of ‘That explains it’ look”.

Since I moved to Scotland, people have asked me where I’m from. “Vancouver, British Columbia,” I reply. Most leave it at that because they have relatives or friends in Canada and would rather discuss them. But others persist: “Where are you really from?” Once, an older gentleman in the library in Dumfries asked if I was from the Far East. “Yes, I live in Edinburgh,” I replied. He left me alone after that.

It’s not that people shouldn’t ask. I’m happy to tell others that both my parents were born in the Philippines and immigrated to Canada, individually, in the Seventies. (They later met in what used to be Simpson’s department store in Toronto.) But the nature of these questions can make you feel like an outsider. As Kay says, “I felt it was being pointed out to me, in a more sophisticated manner, that I didn’t belong in Scotland”.

Other comments are just plain ignorant. Walking down West Princes Street in Glasgow, I passed a man who muttered something about a tan. “Nice tan,” I think he said to me. Kay has also been asked about her tan. In Wigtown a woman asked her and her mother, “Is that lady your daughter? Oh? Your daughter is awful tanned. Is she that colour every day?”

Once or twice things have turned ugly. A fight broke out in Glasgow’s Ashton Lane, when a drunken man asked my Scottish boyfriend where he “bought me”. Kay’s experiences have been much more humiliating. In 1980, during the rise of the British Movement, posters were put up around Stirling University that asked: “Would you be seen with that Irish-Catholic wog called Jackie Kay?” Kay locked herself into her student apartment and was offered police protection.

Racism happens without warning. You never know how to react. Dignity? Fury?…

Read the entire review here.

The Adoption Papers

Bloodaxe Books
1991
64 pages
21.6 x 13.9 x 0.5 cm
Paperback ISBN: 978-1852241568

Jackie Kay, Professor of Creative Writing
Newcastle University

The “Telling Part”: Reimagining Racial Recognition in Jackie Kay’s Adoptee Search Narratives

Contemporary Women’s Writing
Volume 9, Issue 2 (July 2015)
pages 277-296
DOI: 10.1093/cww/vpu041

Pamela Fox, Professor of English
Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

This article examines Jackie Kay’s earliest and renowned autobiographical poetic text, The Adoption Papers (1991), in relation to her latest narrative memoir, Red Dust Road (2010), and in the context of racial recognition theories recently revived in transracial adoption (TRA) discourse, as well as in transnational adoptee versions of TRA search narratives. Investigating the tropes of mirrors and bodily markings recurring in both texts, the article also draws on literary theories of recognition to enrich our understanding of Kay’s unique and dual intervention into TRA debates around notions of kinship, as well as autobiographical narrative models that fully reject or embrace a longing for racialized epistemic and narrative wholeness. Kay periodically preserves yet ultimately reimagines the myriad tensions of seeking and practicing racial recognition by constituting it as a distinct but momentary kind of vision. Her practice of life writing highlights reading (both literal and interpretive) as a crucial component of self-construction that continually mediates between individual and group identities. She presents the adoptive self as a freeing constellation of shifting affiliations, but as the product of intertwined Western and diasporic histories and relations, her texts also bear the marks of longing for a singular legible “home,” a stable “I.”

Read or purchase the article here.

University of Salford installs new Chancellor, Professor Jackie Kay MBE

University of Salford
Salford, United Kingdom
Friday, 2015-05-01

The University celebrated the official installation of it’s sixth Chancellor, renowned poet Professor Jackie Kay MBE, at a grand ceremony in Peel Hall on Wednesday 29 April 2015.

Jackie Kay MBE was formally initiated in a ceremony that saw celebrated Accrington writer Jeanette Winterson and Salford City Mayor Ian Stewart sing the praises of the renowned Scottish poet who will now head up the university.

The role of Chancellor will see distinguished, award-winning writer of fiction, poetry and plays act as the ceremonial head of the institution and play an important part in representing the University of Salford and supporting the work of students and the wider community.

In addition to her role as Chancellor, Jackie will also take up the position of University ‘Writer in Residence.’ This role involves contributing major commissions to enhance learning and teaching, and broaden the students’ experience at the University…

…Jackie has published five collections of poetry for adults and several for children. Jackie’s first book of poetry, The Adoption Papers won the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year and a commendation from the Forward Poetry Prize judges.

Her other awards include the Guardian First Book Award Fiction Prize for her celebrated first novel Trumpet and the Somerset Maugham Award for Other Lovers.

She also writes extensively for the stage and screen. Her play Twice Over was the first by a Black writer to be produced by Gay Sweatshop Theatre Group in 1988. Her plays have been performed at The Royal Exchange and more recently she wrote Manchester Lines for the Library Theatre.

Her drama The Lamplighter looks in depth at the Atlantic slave trade and was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and published by Bloodaxe.

Jackie has lived in Manchester for over 15 years and is Cultural Fellow at Glasgow Caledonian University. Jackie is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle and her 2010 book Red Dust Road is currently being made into a play for television…

Read the entire article here.

University of Salford officially appoints renowned poet Professor Jackie Kay as their new chancellor

Manchester Evening News
Manchester, England
2015-05-09

Charlotte Dobson, Social Affairs Reporter

Prof Jackie Kay MBE appointed as the Chancellor of the University of Salford

Professor Jackie Kay MBE was formally initiated at a ceremony attended by fellow celebrated writer Jeanette Winterson on Wednesday.

A celebrated poet has been appointed as the Chancellor of the University of Salford.

Prof Jackie Kay MBE, an award-winning writer of fiction, poetry and plays, said it was an honour to be chosen for the role.

Prof Kay will also take up the position of university writer in residence.

Prof Kay said: “I feel honoured to have been chosen as the new chancellor for the University of Salford and look forward to being a hands-on chancellor, as well as a ‘shaking hands’ chancellor…

Read the entire article here.

“Love Letter to My Ancestors:” Representing Traumatic Memory in Jackie Kay’s The Lamplighter

Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies
Volume 36, Number 2 (December 2014)
pages 161-182

Petra Tournay-Theodotou, Associate Professor of English
European University Cyprus, Engomi, Nicosia-Cyprus

Jackie Kay’s The Lamplighter, published in 2008, was first broadcast on BBC radio in 2007 to coincide with the commemoration of the bicentenary of the abolition of the African slave trade in Britain. Kay’s dramatised poem or play, as it has alternately been defi ned, focuses on the female experience of enslavement and the particular forms of dehumanization the female slave had to endure. Kay’s project can in fact be described in terms of Marianne Hirsch’s concept of “postmemory,” or more specifically of “feminist postmemory.” As such, literary devices are employed to emulate the traumatic events at the level of form such as intertextuality, repetition and a fragmented narrative voice. While commemorating the evils of the past, Kay simultaneously wishes to draw attention to contemporary forms of racism and exploitation in the pursuit of profit. Through re-telling the story of slavery, The Lamplighter can ultimately be regarded as Kay’s tribute to her African roots and the suffering endured by her African forebears and contemporaries.

Read the entire article here.

Appointment of new Chancellor

University of Salford, Manchester
News
2014-10-17

The distinguished award-winning writer of fiction, poetry and plays, Jackie Kay MBE, has been appointed as our new Chancellor. Jackie, who takes up the position immediately, takes over from the University’s previous Chancellor, Dr Irene Khan who stepped down earlier this year after her five-year term.

As well as the honorary role of Chancellor, Jackie will, from the 1 January 2015, take up the position of University ‘Writer in Residence’. In this capacity, she will contribute major commissions that will enhance learning and teaching and the students’ broader experience at the University.

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Martin Hall said: “We are thrilled to welcome Jackie to our University. She will inspire our staff, work with our students to help them imagine their future selves and strengthen our role as a civic institution in our wider community.”

Jackie Kay said:” It’s a huge honour to have been chosen to be Chancellor of Salford University, and I’m very much looking forward to taking up the role, and to being a hands-on Chancellor, as well as a shaking hands Chancellor. As Writer in Residence, the idea of getting to know each department thoroughly and of finding new and pioneering ways to work across disciplines excites me.”…

…Jackie, who lives in Manchester, was born to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father in Edinburgh and was adopted as a baby by Helen and John Kay, growing up in Glasgow…

Read the entire article here.

Award-winning author and poet Jackie Kay appointed as University of Salford’s new chancellor

Manchester Evening News
Manchester, England
2014-10-19

Dean Kirby

Jackie Kay MBE succeeds Dr Irene Khan at the University of Salford, who stepped down earlier this year after her five-year term came to an end

An award-winning writer of fiction, poetry and plays has been appointed as the University of Salford’s new chancellor.

Jackie Kay MBE succeeds Dr Irene Khan, who stepped down earlier this year after her five-year term came to an end.

As well as the honorary role of chancellor, Jackie will become the university’s writer in residence…

Read the entire article here.

Jackie Kay on reading out an anti-racist poem at a football ground

The Guardian
2012-10-26

Jackie Kay, Professor of Creative Writing
Newcastle University

Jackie Kay readies for an experiment – being a poet on Sheffield United’s pitch and helping to kick racism out of football

On Monday I’m going to be pitching my anti-racist poem to fans of the Blades and Pompey at Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane stadium, the oldest major football stadium in the world still hosting matches.

I’m an experiment – a poet on the pitch, but not a pitch-perfect poet. I might even be a botched experiment. As far as I know, I’m the first poet to read to a whole stadium just before kick-off – but certainly the first woman poet. The two women behind this initiative are Sue Beeley, head of community at Sheffield United, and Su Walker from Off the Shelf Literature Festival. They came up with the idea of commissioning a poet to write an anti-racist poem, read it at a match, and paint the poem on the stadium walls. They picked me because they’d read I was sporty! Beeley said: ”If it works, it will go down a storm, if it doesn’t we’ll let you know.” Off the Shelf has commissioned poets for years; slowly, deftly, they’ve been creating a poetic map of the city of steel. In Sheffield, Andrew Motion has a poem on the side of one student building, Jarvis Cocker is on another, Benjamin Zephaniah on the railings of another, and Roger McGough can be found in the Winter Garden…

…When I was researching my poem, I came across Arthur Wharton, the first professional black footballer to play in the Football League. He was born in Ghana; his father was half-Scottish and half-Grenadian. He came to England in 1882 and by 1894 was playing for Sheffield United. He died in 1930. Wharton was my talisman. I imagined him coming back from the dead and hearing the news. I imagined his reaction to the monkey chanting. Just thinking about him made me think about the extra time on racism’s clock; how racism is society’s own goal. Shaming….

Read the entire article here.

Missing faces

The Guardian
2007-03-23

Jackie Kay, Professor of Creative Writing
Newcastle University

As the United Kingdom marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade tomorrow, Jackie Kay challenges fellow Scots to acknowledge their forebears’ part in this shameful history and reflects on the ordeal suffered by her ancestors

We’re perhaps over-fond of dates, of going round in circles of a hundred years to mark the birth of, or the death of, trying to grasp, as we all get older, what time means. Anniversaries give us the perfect excuse to try and catch up on what we already should have caught up on. Anniversaries afford us a big noisy opportunity to try and remember what we should not have forgotten.

Slavery is one of those subjects we all think we know about. Men were shipped, packed like sardines, as in that famous drawing by Thomas Clarkson, the abolitionist. The Africans sold their own people – this gets mentioned so often, as if the reiteration of African complicity diminishes responsibility. But what spirit, eh, the African people? Mind you, there’s always been slavery, the ancient Romans were at it, etc etc. We are closed to any more detail; we don’t want to know. We don’t want to imagine how slavery would affect each of the five senses. Too much information fills ordinary people, black and white, with revulsion, distaste, or worse, induces boredom. We think we’ve heard it all before…

Read the entire article here.