Book description
‘Like the best memoirs, this one is written with novelistic and poetic
flair.
Red Dust Road
is a fantastic, probing and heart-warming read’ Independent
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, Jackie Kay’s journey in Red Dust Road
is one of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions. In a book
remarkable for its warmth and candour, she discovers that inheritance is
about much more than genes: that we are shaped by songs as much as by
cells, and that what triumphs, ultimately, is love.
‘A clear-eyed, witty and unsentimental account of the push and pull
between nature and nurture. Happiness shines through’ Sunday Times
‘Wonderful, humane . . . This is a book with resolution, determination
and honesty’ Scotland on Sunday
‘It is Kay’s abundant wit that makes Red Dust Road
such a moving, spirited work. This is a terrifically easy, evocative,
and often amusing read . . . A remarkable, soul-searching journey’
Sunday Herald
Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh. She is a poet, novelist and writer
of short stories and has enjoyed great acclaim for her work for both
adults and children. Her novel Trumpet
won the Guardian
Fiction Prize and is a modern classic. She has published two
collections of stories with Picador, Why Don’t You Stop Talking
and Wish I Was Here
. She teaches at Newcastle University, and lives in Manchester.
