Mixed Race Studies

Red Dust Road: An Autobiographical Journey

Picador an Imprint of PanMacmillan
2010-06-04
304 pages
214mm x 135mm, 0.43 kg
ISBN: 9780330451055

Jackie Kay, Professor of Creative Writing
Newcastle University

‘What makes us who we are? My adoption is a story that has happened to me. I couldn’t make it up.’

From the moment when, as a little girl, she realizes that her skin is a different colour from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents, her Highland mother and Nigerian father, the journey that Jackie Kay undertakes in Red Dust Road is full of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions.

In a book shining with warmth, humour and compassion, she discovers that inheritance is about much more than genes: that we are shaped by songs as much as by cells, and that our internal landscapes are as important as those through which we move.

Taking the reader from Glasgow to Lagos and beyond, Red Dust Road is revelatory, redemptive and courageous, unique in its voice and universal in its reach. It is a heart-stopping story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny, and love.

Jackie Kay’s Representation of ‘The Broons’: Scotland’s Happy Family

eSharp
Special Issue: Spinning Scotland: Exploring Literary and Cultural Perspectives (2009)
pages 109-143
ISSN: 1742-4542

Mª del Coral Calvo Maturana
Universidad de Granada

This paper focuses on the contemporary Scottish poet Jackie Kay and the comic strip ‘The Broons’ by studying Jackie Kay’s representation of this family in contrast to its characterisation in the comic strip. This study presents a brief introduction to Jackie Kay and ‘The Broons’ and pays attention to Kay’s referential portrayal of this Scottish family in five of her poems: ‘Maw Broon Visits a Therapist’ (2006a, p.46-47), ‘Paw Broon on the Starr Report’ (2006a, p.57), ‘The Broon’s Bairn’s Black’ (2006a, p.61), ‘There’s Trouble for Maw Broon’ (2005, p.13-14) and ‘Maw Broon goes for colonic irrigation’ (unpublished). Each of the poems will be approached stylistically by using the advantages offered by corpus linguistics methodology; in particular, the program Wordsmith Tools 3.0. (Scott 1999) will help to show the collocation of certain words through concordances…

Read the entire article here.

The Poet as Cultural Dentist: Ethnicity in the Poetry of Jackie Kay

Theory and Practice in English Studies 4 (2005)
Proceedings from the Eighth Conference of British, American and Canadian Studies.
Brno: Masarykova Univerzita
pages 63-67

Pavlína Hácová, Philosophical Faculty
Palacky University, Olomouc

The acclaimed British poet Jackie Kay (born 1961) belongs to the colourful mainstream of recent British poetry. The paper aims to survey the ethnic imagery and consciousness Kay explores in her poems, predominantly with the images of dentistry. Special attention will be paid to the images of cultural significance. A few sample poems will be discussed to demostrate the constant search for identity (inclusion vs. exclusion, assimilation vs. marginalization) and cultural heritage.

…Kay keeps clear-cut the distinction between white and black. In the poem “Pride”, the exploration of identity that is based on the imagery of teeth, leads to concern with nationality. Kay is proud of her mixed Scottish and Nigerian background. She links her African descent to her Scottish nationality as she compares Scottish clans to African tribes – both sharing the pride of their respective cultures:

His [the stranger’s] face had a look
I’ve seen on a MacLachlan, a MacDonnell, a MacLeod,
the most startling thing, pride. (Kay 1998: “Pride”, lines 51-53)

However, Kay does not see the identity of the characters as either black or white. She has stated in an interview: “I consider myself a Scottish writer, in the sense that I am, and I consider myself a black writer, in the sense that I am, and a woman writer, in the sense that I am” (Severin 2002)…

Read the entire paper here.

Jackie Kay (Review of Darling)

Aesthetica Magazine
Issue 19 (2007-10-01)
page 10

Rachel Hazelwood

Jackie Kay is one of the most prolific and insightful poets currently writing in the UK today. At a time when too many people frequently describe the form as being “in decline” and thought of as an “exclusive club”, Kay writes poems that are accessible, yet deeply involved and involving. Her poetry embraces the reader, and at the same time it challenges them to really think about what she is saying. Her work covers weighty themes such as gender, ethnicity, racism and cultural difference, and presents them in ways that leave you marvelling at her command of language, and at the same time feeling as though you have gained valuable insight into subjects fraught with social and emotional complexities. As far as Kay is concerned: “All you need is a way of reading poetry so while you’re listening, you are also reading; and that you listen to poetry like you might listen to a piece of music. You actually don’t need to understand it in the first instance; you’re listening to enjoy and experience language, not to worry about it.  Once you’re past worrying you can actually return again and again to the same poem, and that’s what I think is wonderful about poetry.”

Kay’s latest work, Darling, published in October 2007, brings together into a vibrant new book many favourite poems from her four Bloodaxe collections, The
Adoption Papers, Other Lovers, Off Colour and Life Mask, as well as featuring new work, some previously uncollected poems, and some lively poetry for younger readers…

Read the entire review here.

Mixed-race theory for everyone

Mixedness & mixing: New perspectives on mixed-race Britons
A Commission for Racial Equality eConference
2007-09-04 through 2007-09-06

Jin Haritaworn, Assistant Professor in Gender, Race and Environment at the Faculty of Environmental Studies
York University, Canada

What insights does mixed-race theory bear for mixed-race people, our allies, and the professionals who work with us? This paper introduces three lessons which are especially relevant in this time and place.

Table of Contents

Lesson 1: Scandalising the ‘What are you?’ encounter
Lesson 2: The good mix and the bad
Lesson 3: A Mongrel Nation?

Mixed-race theory helps us challenge the voyeuristic entitlement which some people feel to find out intimate things about us. Many of us are used to giving unreciprocated information about our identities, origins and families. We endure this treatment as we know from experience that the person asking ‘Where are you from?’ will not be satisfied with ‘Northampton’. We rarely risk challenging this inappropriate ‘smalltalk’, for fear of being labelled irritating.

Read the entire paper here.

Don’t tell me who I am

The Guardian
2002-01-12

Libby Brooks, Deputy Comment Editor

Jackie Kay has become used to all kinds of assumptions being made about her identity—literary, national, sexual and familial. The more annoying, because the joy of being a writer is that you can create any persona you like. On the other hand, she does want to stand and be counted. She explains to Libby Brooks

Jackie Kay tells a tale of mistaken identity. “I went to sit down in this chair in a London pub and this woman says, ‘You cannae sit doon in that chair – that’s ma chair.’ I said, ‘Oh, you’re from Glasgow, aren’t you?’ and she said, ‘Aye, how did you know that?’ I said, ‘I’m from Glasgow myself.’ She said, ‘You’re not, are you, you foreign-looking bugger!'” Kay roars delightedly. “I still have Scottish people asking me where I’m from. They won’t actually hear my voice, because they’re too busy seeing my face.” Meanwhile, in Glasgow, her black female friends are stopped in the street and asked if they’re Jackie Kay…

…Born in Edinburgh to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father, Kay herself was adopted by a white couple and brought up in Glasgow. A lesbian – she lives in Manchester with poet Carol Ann Duffy, her own 13-year-old son, Matthew, and Duffy’s daughter, Ella, six – Kay has found her own identities too easily commodified for comfort. “Your characters are fiction, but when you’re a public writer people often try to make them you. Often, they have this real need, which seems to come out of our culture, to relate things back to this big thing called the personality. There’s something discomforting about that gaze being on you because, by writing, you’ve deliberately chosen to put yourself behind the scenes…

…Kay has always read and always written. As a young girl growing up in predominantly white Glasgow, books such as Anne Of Green Gables and the Famous Five series offered her other lives, while writing gave her the chance to create her own. When she was 12, she wrote the 80-page One Person, Two Names in a school jotter, illustrated by a pal, about a girl living in the States who was black but pretended to be white. “It interests me that I still write about the same things,” she notes dryly…

Read the entire article here.

Does ‘race’ matter? A study of ‘mixed race’ siblings’ identifications

Sociological Review
Volume 58, Issue 2 (May 2010)
Pages 265 – 285
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2010.01903.x

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent

‘Mixed’ people comprise one of the fastest growing populations in Britain today, and their growth refutes the idea that there exist distinct, ‘natural’ races among people in multiethnic societies, such as Britain. In recent years, a large body of scholarship, both in the US and Britain, has begun to investigate the diverse social experiences and racial identifications of mixed people. In this article, I investigate the ways in which mixed siblings perceive and think about race and differences in racial, ethnic, and religious identification within their families. What role do race and the recognition of difference play in sibling relationships and in family life more generally? I draw upon a small number of cases to illustrate the diverse ways in which understandings of race, ethnicity, and religion are (or are not) regarded as important in these families. I also consider whether there are group differences in terms of how disparate types of mixed siblings may perceive pressures to identify in particular ways.

Read or purchase the article here.

A cross-cultural marriage is an adventure I’d recommend

The Observer
2009-12-27

Anushka Asthana, Education Correspondent

Mixed-race unions in this country are on the increase, a magical journey that benefits all the families involved

One visit to India and a childhood playing cricket was never going to be quite enough to prepare Toby, a white Englishman who grew up in Oxfordshire, for his marriage. After all, you don’t just marry an Indian woman—you marry her large (and often eccentric) family and all that brings with it.

The realisation began to sink in for Toby at the Hindu part of our wedding, three months ago. He got out of arriving on the back of a white horse, but we persuaded him to go along with the rest of it. That included being dressed up from head to toe, with a red turban with white tassels hanging over his face, embroidered scarf, full-length white coat with gold trimmings and his very own pair of what he called “Aladdin” shoes. He took part in the “baraat“, an Indian tradition in which the groom arrives with family and friends dancing around him.

So there they were: swinging their arms to the bhangra beat of a dhol drum with shell-shocked smiles as they were met by the cheering crowd of “aunties” and “uncles” (not real ones—that is how we address any Indian person above the age of 40) and bending down to have garlands draped around their necks and red marks smeared on their foreheads.

The image of a white British groom at the centre of a mass of ecstatic Indian aunties would once have been a rarity. But research released earlier this year found that one in 10 people in Britain with Indian heritage who is in a relationship has a partner of a different race. The study, by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, found the same was true of half of all Caribbean men, one in five black African men and two out of five Chinese women. The result so far: one in 10 children in Britain is living in a mixed-race family…

Read the entire article here.

Parenting children from ‘mixed’ racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds: typifications of difference and belonging

Ethnic and Racial Studies
First Published on: 2009-10-29
Volume 33, Issue 6 (preview)
DOI: 10.1080/01419870903318185

Rosalind Edwards, Professor in Social Policy
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Shuby Puthussery, Senior Research Fellow
Family and Parenting Institute, London

In this article, we draw on data from an in-depth study of thirty-five parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds to explore how they understood and negotiated difference and belonging in bringing up their children. We identify and abstract three main typifications the mothers and fathers drew on in their accounts: open individualized, mix collective and single collective, and elaborate their constituent discursive motifs. Using in-depth case studies, we then consider the part played by these typifications in how parents negotiate their understandings with their partner where they hold divergent views. We conclude that parents’ understandings are developed and situated in different personal and structural contexts that shape rather than determine their understandings and negotiations.

Read or purchase the article here.

What happens after segmented assimilation? An exploration of intermarriage and ‘mixed race’ young people in Britain

Ethnic and Racial Studies
First Published on: 2010-03-17
Volume 33, Issue 7 (preview)
DOI: 10.1080/01419871003625271

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent 

Theorizing on segmented assimilation has usefully spurred debate about the experiences and positions of the second generation in the US and, more recently, Europe. This theory has focused primarily on how young people fare in secondary school and the crucial role that families and ethnic social networks can play in supporting second-generation individuals. But what happens when young people leave home and enter into mainstream higher education institutions? Theorizing on segmented assimilation does not address either the implications of intermarriage for integration and upward mobility or how we should conceptualize the experiences of the growing numbers of ‘mixed race’ individuals. In this paper, I first consider the question of whether intermarriage is linked with upward mobility in the British context. I then explore the racial identifications and experiences of disparate types of mixed race young people in Britain. How do such young people identify themselves, and what may their identifications reveal about their sense of belonging in Britain?

Read or purchase the article here.