{"id":46114,"date":"2016-03-20T16:05:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-20T16:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=46114"},"modified":"2016-03-20T16:34:11","modified_gmt":"2016-03-20T16:34:11","slug":"jackie-kays-quest-for-her-roots-theresa-munoz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=46114","title":{"rendered":"Jackie Kay’s Quest For Her Roots – Theresa Mu\u00f1oz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jackie Kay’s Quest For Her Roots – Theresa Mu\u00f1oz<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Scottish Review of Books<\/a>
\nVolume 6, Issue 3<\/a> (2010-08-12)<\/p>\n

Theresa Mu\u00f1oz<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Adopted at birth, Jackie Kay<\/a> discovered neither of her birth parents were who she\u2019d thought they\u2019d be, her new memoir recalls.<\/em><\/p>\n

“If you have skin my colour\u201d writes Jackie Kay<\/a> in her memoir Red Dust Road<\/em><\/a>, \u201cyou must be a foreigner.\u201d All of her life, people have asked her where she is from. Glasgow<\/a>, she\u2019d tell them. Then people would inquire, but where are her parents from? Her parents are from Glasgow and Fife<\/a>, she\u2019d say. But she would also add that she\u2019s adopted and her birth father is Nigerian. \u201cThey\u2019d nod,\u201d Kay says, \u201cwith a kind of \u2018That explains it\u2019 look\u201d.<\/p>\n

Since I moved to Scotland<\/a>, people have asked me where I\u2019m from. \u201cVancouver, British Columbia<\/a>,\u201d I reply. Most leave it at that because they have relatives or friends in Canada<\/a> and would rather discuss them. But others persist: \u201cWhere are you really from?\u201d Once, an older gentleman in the library in Dumfries<\/a> asked if I was from the Far East<\/a>. \u201cYes, I live in Edinburgh<\/a>,\u201d I replied. He left me alone after that.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that people shouldn\u2019t ask. I\u2019m happy to tell others that both my parents were born in the Philippines<\/a> and immigrated to Canada, individually, in the Seventies. (They later met in what used to be Simpson\u2019s department store<\/a> in Toronto<\/a>.) But the nature of these questions can make you feel like an outsider. As Kay says, \u201cI felt it was being pointed out to me, in a more sophisticated manner, that I didn\u2019t belong in Scotland\u201d.<\/p>\n

Other comments are just plain ignorant. Walking down West Princes Street in Glasgow, I passed a man who muttered something about a tan. \u201cNice tan,\u201d I think he said to me. Kay has also been asked about her tan. In Wigtown<\/a> a woman asked her and her mother, \u201cIs that lady your daughter? Oh? Your daughter is awful tanned. Is she that colour every day?\u201d<\/p>\n

Once or twice things have turned ugly. A fight broke out in Glasgow\u2019s Ashton Lane<\/a>, when a drunken man asked my Scottish boyfriend where he \u201cbought me\u201d. Kay\u2019s experiences have been much more humiliating. In 1980, during the rise of the British Movement<\/a>, posters were put up around Stirling University that asked: \u201cWould you be seen with that Irish-Catholic wog<\/a> called Jackie Kay?\u201d Kay locked herself into her student apartment and was offered police protection.<\/p>\n

Racism happens without warning. You never know how to react. Dignity? Fury?…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jackie Kay’s Quest For Her Roots – Theresa Mu\u00f1oz Scottish Review of Books Volume 6, Issue 3 (2010-08-12) Theresa Mu\u00f1oz Adopted at birth, Jackie Kay discovered neither of her birth parents were who she\u2019d thought they\u2019d be, her new memoir recalls. “If you have skin my colour\u201d writes Jackie Kay in her memoir Red Dust […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,395,5,10],"tags":[1587,153,23260,23261],"class_list":["post-46114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-book-reviews","category-uk","tag-jackie-kay","tag-scotland","tag-scottish-review-of-books","tag-theresa-munoz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46119,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46114\/revisions\/46119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}