JackieKay by scottishbookawards
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 (Picador) 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.
Reviews
“This is no solemn Roots-style search for identity but a clear-eyed, witty and unsentimental account of the push and pull between nature and nurture.” – The Times
“Kay excels at any literary genre she turns her hand to – poetry, fiction, drama and now memoir. Yet, like the best memoirs, this one is written with novelistic and poetic flair. Characters come alive with pitch-perfect speech, language is lyrically and imaginatively rendered, there is page-turning suspense.” – The Independent
“Written with the colloquial, swift-moving verve of a born communicator, this is a terrifically easy, evocative, and often amusing read.” – The Herald
Links
Jackie writes exclusively for Scottish Book Awards about Red Dust Road.
Read an interview with Jackie Kay in the Telegraph
Click for an interview about Jackie Kay’s poetry
Find out Jackie Kay’s thoughts on the short story at the BBC National Short Story Award
See how Red Dust road encouraged novelist Aminatta Forna to discover her own history
