Trumpet: A Novel

Description

"Supremely humane.... Kay leaves us with a broad landscape of sweet tolerance and familial love."--The New York Times Book Review

In her starkly beautiful and wholly unexpected tale, Jackie Kay delves into the most intimate workings of the human heart and mind and offers a triumphant tale of loving deception and lasting devotion.

The death of legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody exposes an extraordinary secret, one that enrages his adopted son, Colman, leading him to collude with a tabloid journalist. Besieged by the press, his widow Millie flees to a remote Scottish village, where she seeks solace in memories of their marriage. The reminiscences of those who knew Joss Moody render a moving portrait of a shared life founded on an intricate lie, one that preserved a rare, unconditional love.

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"It was our secret. That's all it was. Lots of people have secrets, don't they? The world runs on secrets. What kind of place would the world be without them? Our secret was harmless. It did not hurt anybody."

The secret that Millicent Moody, widow of jazz great Joss Moody, refers to may have been harmless in life, but when Joss dies and the truth is exposed, it ends up affecting more people than she ever imagined. It gives nothing away to reveal right off that Millicent's late husband was, in fact, a woman--something Millie has known all along but that the Moodys' adopted son, Colman, only discovers after his father's death. Titillating as the subject matter initially seems, in Jackie Kay's capable hands Joss's gender-bending becomes almost a side issue in a novel that is, at its heart, concerned with the essential nature of love.

Kay tells her story from many different perspectives--the doctor who signs the death certificate, the mortician who prepares the body, the opportunistic biographer looking to make a buck and a name for herself, the musicians who knew Joss--but it is Millicent and Colman who bear the brunt of both the pain and the responsibility for telling the tale. Millie Moody is a tremendously sympathetic character; her love for Joss is so powerful, so right that the reader never questions the decisions this odd couple made in life. "I didn't feel like I was living a lie," Millie tells us. "I felt like I was living a life." Colman, on the other hand, is more difficult to like. Though it's easy to understand his anger and confusion upon suddenly learning that the man he regarded as his father for 30 years was actually a woman, one also has the sneaking suspicion that he wasn't a particularly lovable guy before the revelation, either. Still, by the end of Trumpet, there's hope for Colman, peace of mind for Millie, and a satisfying rendering of love in all its permutations for the reader. --Alix Wilber

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Darling: New and Selected Poems

Description

Humor, gender, sexuality, sensuality, identity, racism, cultural difference: when do any of these things ever come together to equal poetry? When Jackie Kay is part of the equation. Darling brings together into a vibrant new book many favorite 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. ""Her grand, embracing spirit should be better known in the U.S."" Booklist

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Red Dust Road. Jackie Kay

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".

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Adoption Papers

Description

Jackie Kay tells the story of a black girl's adoption by a white Scottish couple- from three different viewpoints: the mother, the birth mother, and the daughter.

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Bessie Smith (Outlines)

Description

Bessie Smith was certainly the greatest blues singer who lived and probably one of the greatest and most influential singers of the twentieth century. Her blues songs mirrored her tempestuous life as she travelled across America performing and making records, taking both male and female lovers, achieving great wealth and stardom until her eventual decline during the years of the depression. She died in a car crash in 1937 aged 43.

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Speaking from the Margins: The Voice of the 'other' in the Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay

Description

Speaking from the Margins: The Voice of the Other in the Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay studies Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay as poets who identify and represent some key forms of otherness may take in the British society of the 1980s and the 1990s. Indeed, although Duffy s poetry is political and concerned with the British society of the 1980s and the 1990s, particularly with the condition of the underprivileged and people pushed to the margins of society as a result of Thatcherite policies, criticism of her poetry is more concerned with her feminist representation of gender in her work. Thus, it is important that her poetry of the 1980s and the 1990s is recognised as a poetry of the other as Duffy in this poetry gives specifically a panorama of Thatcherite Britain through the voice of the other . Similarly, this thesis analyses Jackie Kay s poetry as a poetry which is critical not only of Britain but also is particularly concerned with the condition of the racial and the sexual other in the 1980s and the 1990s Britain. Although The Adoption Papers has often been discussed and analysed mostly by focusing on the issues of identity and adoption, Severe Gale 8 , the sequel to The Adoption Papers , Other Lovers and Off Colour have not been the focus of much academic study from the aspect of the voice given to the racial and the sexual other. This research monograph studies Jackie Kay and Carol Ann Duffy as poets representing the voice of the other in the 1980s and the 1990s British society because there is a considerable lack of criticism on this particular aspect of their poetry. The works of these two poets are part of contemporary British poetry in which as Kennedy puts it the heterogeneity of the ex-centric , the marginal and the peripheral is raided in order to revitalise and refurbish the homogeneity of the centre. Diversity is used to underwrite a new uniformity ( Mapping Value ). Introduction Overview of the 1980s and the 1990s poetry scene in the United Kingdom given to serve as a background framework for the poetry of the two poets under study. Part I: The Voice of the Other in the Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy After a brief introduction to the social and economic background of contemporary British society and its impact on the poetry of the 1980s and the 1990s, the voice of the other in selected poems of Carol Ann Duffy from her poetry collections Standing Female Nude (1985), Selling Manhattan (1987), The Other Country (1990) and Mean Time (1993) will be studied in Chapter I. Part II: The Voice of the Other in the Poetry of Jackie Kay The poetry of Jackie Kay from The Adoption Papers (1991), Other Lovers (1993) and Off Colour (1999) are studied closely with respect to the racial and sexual other she represents concerning the voice of the other in society. Conclusion The study of the relevantly selected poetry of Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay shows that Duffy, through her use of the dramatic monologue, and Kay, by using her own experiences present the voice of the other in their poetry. Duffy gives voice to the outcasts in the society such as the criminal, the mentally ill, the rejected, the silenced, the marginalized, the unemployed and the immigrant, and Kay herself already an other as a black girl adopted and raised by a Scottish family deals with racial issues, racial and sexual otherness in contemporary Britain. Both Duffy and Kay have their poetry represent the contemporary Britain through the experience and voice of the other . Market: Modern British Poetry; Feminist Poets(UK), Cultural Studies, Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy, Poetry of Jackie Kay, the 'Other' [the marginal,the peripheral]in British Poetry, Modern Scots Poetry(Kay) Release Date: 06/01/2010

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