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- [00:05]
A
Hello. Welcome to a new episode of Homing. I'm Matt Gibbard. Today's guest is Jackie Kay, a poet and novelist who was previously the National Poet of Scotland, a role known as the Macca. Jackie was adopted as a baby by a white Scottish couple, and she grew up in suburban Glasgow. Throughout her life, she's explored questions of identity, belonging and family, themes that run through some of the most celebrated writing of the past 40 years. In this conversation, we explore how the love that Jackie experienced from her adoptive parents helped her navigate racism, what it feels like when people question your right to belong, and whether it's ever possible to feel completely at home in yourself. I'd never met Jackie before this. Parts of her story I found very difficult to hear, quite emotional, but she's also one of the warmest and funniest people I've had the pleasure of talking to. So I really enjoyed this, and I hope you enjoy it, too. So, Jackie, I always start with the same question, which is, how do you define the word home? Because everyone has a different view on this word, so I'd love to get yours. I'm intrigued.
- [01:17]
B
Well, for me, the way that I define home changes depending on my mood and how I'm feeling. Sometimes it's a place where I actually live. It's my house, it's where I come back to. It's where I feel comfortable. It's where I feel I can be completely myself. Sometimes it's my childhood home that I grew up in, in Glasgow. Sometimes it's actually my city, Glasgow itself, going home to Glasgow, I'll say. But now all of that's. And the notion of home has changed quite dramatically since my mother, my father and my brother, who all lived in Glasgow until not that long ago, all died. So my sense of the city being home and the childhood home that they were still in has all been quite ruptured. So home is a concept as well as a place. It's a state of mind as well as an emotion. It's a physical building as well as an abstract set of emotions, including nostalgia, sentiment, all sorts of things.
- [02:20]
A
What a brilliant answer. Yeah, I completely agree with that. I'm sorry to hear about your family bereavement. Does that suggest that also home is found in other people as well, in family members and friends, do you think?
- [02:32]
B
Yeah, I think that home is definitely to do with what people give to each other. And I think that that's proven when people are made homeless suddenly, through earthquakes or disasters, or through war, when they have to flee their homes and set up makeshift tents around the world that they actually will find a way to create a sense of home. And a lot of that will come from each other, from people in the similar plight, from each other, from their immediate family, from how people cope with disaster. So to me, living in a house that has running water, that has central heating, that is safe and protected, is a huge luxury and I never stop thinking about that.
- [03:19]
A
So could you tell me a bit about your family home growing up and what that was like? I mean, some people listening will be familiar with you and your backstory, but others won't be. So, you know, just be curious if you could just put a bit of colour around what your upbringing was like.
- [03:36]
B
Yes, absolutely. Well, first of all, I was adopted, so the home that I was taken to was my first home. I was adopted at five months old and brought from Edinburgh to Glasgow and to suburban part of Glasgow called Bishop Briggs in North Glasgow. And my parents had this Lawrence house, a bit similar to Wimpy houses and a kind of. But my mum always liked to be sure that it wasn't Wimpy, it was Lawrence, and she was annoyed if I ever confused the two. Bishopriggs itself is an area unkind people would call it Spam Valley because the people living in Bishop Briggs were so conscious to buy these wee Lauren houses that they had to live off Spam all the time. Bishop Briggs punters got very offended at the term Spam Valley, but I kind of liked it because I was a kind of, you know, a rebel. So, yeah, we had two bedroomed house, a living room. It was really, really small house, a kitchen, a driveway. It was a very small house, but not small compared to if you're all crammed into a tenement and not small compared to all sorts of other places. My dad, who was a working class boy but a scholarship boy who'd gone to a famous kind of Glasgow school, Alan Glenns on the scholarship, had come to Bishopriggs as a boy from his tenement in Tunhed and he was really enchanted with Bishopriggs, so he was just made up and he never wanted to move that from that house and they never did. My mom always wanted to move from the house and was annoyed at the house in all sorts of different ways. So she was always. I spent half my childhood with her looking in estate agent windows at fantasy houses with bay windows. But I wrote a poem about it called Windows Lakes, where we're peeling in this estate agent in Windermere and she's going, look at that. I've Always fancied a house with bay windows, a cushion and obey windows. She had all these different fantasy houses. So I like that too. I grew up in an actual house, but also with my mum's imaginative ideas of what home could be.
- [05:37]
A
That's really nice. I love that. And what sort of atmosphere was it in the home? I mean, what kind of atmosphere would you say your parents created there?
- [05:45]
B
Well, they were really, really great, fun people. They were both really into music and into song. In fact, they sang to communicate to each other just as much as they spoke, so they would always riff off different songs all the time. They had these party socials in our house. They were both members of the Communist Party, so they would have party socials where people would arrive a fiver in the bucket, comrade, and then put their fiver in the bucket. And then they'd come and everybody would be like, one singer, one song, and everybody would get really involved and sing their songs and do their party pieces. And this small living room. I mean, God knows how we fitted so many people in, but we just did. We just burst. And I'm always running into people, even now, that were at these party socials because they were quite kind of famous, you know, people loved them and they all loved trekking out to Bishop Briggs.
- [06:38]
A
So interesting. And when. When it wasn't a sort of, you know, the site of a big party, was it also a kind of quiet place? Was it also a place that you could find some refuge in some way if you needed to?
- [06:51]
B
I never found it quiet enough because it was so small. I shared a room with my brother. He was quite loud and, I mean, he was silent, he didn't speak, but when he spoke, he was really loud. And I shared a room with him till I was nine and we shared bunk beds. And that was always really difficult, actually. He was very, very messy and I'm not. And he quite enjoyed kind of like messing. I try and keep my things neat. And he quite enjoyed pulling the drawer open and throwing all my things onto the floor and things like that were setting traps for me as I came in the door. So he'd come in the bedroom door and he's set a big, heavy dictionary and as you went, pushed open the door, the dictionary would fall on your head and then he'd go swat. And he took great pleasure out of that. Or he'd wake you. He'd lean from the top bunk bed in the morning and spit on you in the morning to wake you up, things like that. So it was really quite a grotesque Thing. And one morning I was awake, ready for him, and I saw the arm coming down and I pulled him on the floor and he fell on the floor and hurt himself and I got into trouble. So that was. Yeah, he wasn't quiet. My dad wasn't quiet. He had a very, very loud speaking voice and he was always on the phone in the hall, which was in the hall that led directly up to the bedrooms to comrades. And he'd always be using the word comrades in the opposite way to what you'd expect. It's reasonable. Look here, comrade, you said you'd do this, so I thought, comrade. Does comrade a friendly word or is it not? I don't know. And the only time that there was peace in the house was when it was just me and my mum. She was really quiet to be with and we kind of often draw and read together and things like that. But it was still a really great house to grow up in. And all my friends loved being in my house better than their own. They would flock to my house, they'd flock to my parents. All of them wanted my parents rather than their own. So I was very, very, very proud of them. And they often had people come to stay from all over the world. So you'd come down the stairs in the morning and you'd find somebody from Sri Lanka or lying in your living room floor. And that was quite exciting too, because I grew up in an all white part of Glasgow. And, you know, my original father was from Nigeria and my mother was from the Highlands, but both my parents were white Scottish people. And so it was quite exciting to get different people of different colors sometimes staying in the house. My brother was also the same color as me, though they adopted him first and they got me to keep him company, even though he wasn't my biological brother, he was a kind of similar color. So that was quite forward thinking for the late 1950s.
- [09:31]
A
Well, very much so. And so on that. Was there a particular moment where you realized I've got a different skin color to my parents?
- [09:38]
B
Yeah, I think. I think these things are so subliminal for so long, so subconscious. And when you do realize, you do a lot of hindsight too, you think, oh, that's why this and that's why that. And there's a lot of kind of catching up because race is a state of consciousness, but the consciousness is incremental. It doesn't come in a Big Bang moment, but the moment, the Big Bang moment that I do remember most vividly was when I was seven and my mum And I were watching a cowboy and Indian film and I noticed that the Indians were the same color as me and that my mum wasn't. And so I asked her why? Why wasn't she the same color as me? And she said, because you'd adopted. And I said, what does adopted mean? And my brother laughed. Don't you know what adoption means? I can't believe you don't know what adoption means. He was sitting, finding the whole thing really hilarious, and I said, no, I don't know. And my mum said, it means I'm not your real mom. And then I was really confused by not being a real mom. And that really upset me. I found it really upsetting. The thing I was upset about is the idea that she wasn't my real mom. I actually thought that meant that she wasn't real at 7, that something was going to happen to her and that she was going to disappear in a puff of smoke or something. So I was really afraid by it and upset. And she said, you, real mother couldn't keep you, but I chose you and you were picked, you were chosen. She said other people had to take what they got, but you were chosen. And she said, but your dad and I love you more than all the tea in China, more than all the waves in the ocean, and we'll love you till all the seas run dry.
- [11:16]
A
That's really, really beautiful, isn't it? So touching. What did that. Looking back on it now, what did that moment, because you were seven, right, when you had that moment, you talked about there, what did that do to your sense of home, do you think?
- [11:29]
B
I think it made things feel a bit more shaky. If my mum went up the ladder to put a light bulb in, I'd worry that she was going to fall off the ladder and die. I was quite imaginative. And also she didn't keep very well. So from when I was about nine and my brother and I always thought something was going to go wrong with her, I think perhaps when you're adopted, that is, you do have a stronger sense of things possibly being taken away. Are things abruptly changing? And because there's nobody, at least there wasn't then talking to you properly about these issues of adoption, you're left with a lot of it in your mind. Even though my mom was actually very open and talked about adoption much, much more than my dad wanted her to, because my dad didn't want us to talk about adoption, he just wanted us to get on with being a family and he resented other people even mentioning it. He was always Saying to me things like, there's a Scottish writer called Candy McWilliam that wrote a wonderful memoir. You might be interested in talking to her, actually. But he read one day in the paper that she's adopted and he said, have you seen that? Candy McWilliams adopted? And I said, yes, she doesn't write about it all the time.
- [12:50]
A
So I'm curious as to how. What was life like for you then, outside of the family unit? Because presumably Glasgow was predominantly white at that time. Did you and your brother feel like you fitted in at school and so on?
- [13:04]
B
No, we didn't feel we fitted in at school at all at primary school. And we got a lot of. I mean, really a lot at primary school. One boy was expelled from school for the racism he did to me, and two of them were given the belt in front of me. The headmaster brought me down to see them being given the belt and he thought that would be good for me.
- [13:23]
A
It wasn't, but how did that feel?
- [13:26]
B
Oh, terrible, terrible. But they had been waiting for me for three weeks at the school gate and shoving mud into my mouth. They put mud into these bubblegum wrappers, then make them back up into looking like they look like bubblegum, and then hold me down and shove mud into my house. That's what you should have because you're from a mud hut. So it was really quite intense. And I didn't tell my parents about it, actually, for ages, because I always thought that they would get hurt by it. So I used to try and just deal with things on my own until it came to a point when I had to tell them. Because the thing that people often don't talk about, about racism is that for white people that love black people, racism hurts them, too. That's an interesting. But anyway, as soon as they did find out, they were right down at the school, and they were often down at the school because some teachers were racist. You know, one teacher called me a dorky. It was unbelievable. And one teacher said, oh, you know, we're doing a dance for the school show called the Black Bottom. And this teacher said to me, I thought you people had it in your blood. Jacqueline, can you not get these steps right? I thought you people had it in your blood. And I thought, God, what does that mean, you people have it in your blood? But it was one of those kind of memorable expressions.
- [14:40]
A
Wow. So, so heavy, isn't it? We talk a lot on the podcast about this word belonging, but what does something like that do to your sense of belonging in terms of you know, you realize that you look different to a lot of the people around you. You're adopted, you know, so that's already challenging your sense of belonging as well. You're growing up in Scotland, I suppose. I'm interested to know, sort of what did that do to your sense of Scottishness, your sense of belonging to your community? How did you feel about all of that?
- [15:11]
B
I think that as a child I belonged to my mum and dad. I felt very much that I belonged in that family. I loved them, you know, so much. And I felt loved so much. And I do feel that the first thing that I would have to say to anybody about belonging is that love informs your sense of identity more than anything else. So if you're walking down an ordinary street and you look into people's faces, you can kind of almost get a sense of the people that feel loved and the people that don't. And so that's the first. The first thing about identity and belonging to me is love is a sense of being loved and the sense of your own self worth, because love gives you a sense of self worth. So I had that in abundance and it's really just as well because I needed it because just about an awful lot of other things didn't. And so. And I had very good friends as well. But my friends, you know, if I'd be walking down the street and somebody would call me, you know, they. They had all these chants that they did. Nuts. So hazelnuts, Cadbury's. Take them and they cover you in chocolate. Or, you know, what you call two darkies and a sleeping bag? Twix. Or what you call a darkie falling from the top of a mountain. Chocolate drop. So they'd all run after you and shout all of these things and sometimes actually just try and beat you up. But my friends, if I'd be with them, they just wouldn't say anything. They would be embarrassed, so they wouldn't even acknowledge that it happened. And that was a strange thing. And I would be embarrassed because it was happening in front of a friend. So I'd be more focused on being embarrassed because I belonged to my friend and this thing happening suddenly ruptured that than I would be about the actual thing itself. So that was an interesting childhood thing and that goes quite a wee bit back. But then as I grew into being a teenager and went to high school, I much preferred high school and didn't feel the same level of stuff. So it was the opposite from what most people get. Most people are comfortable at primary school and then not so much at high school, but for me, it was the other way around, I think, because also I got to specialize in subjects, and that was better for me. And I took up running and became a Scottish schoolgirl championship runner and was very sporty and did a lot of drama. And so all of these things made me feel that I was developing a sense of who I was. And I wrote a lot. I started writing when I was 12. That also gave me a sense of identity, but in terms of feeling like Scotland, I always felt at odds with my country. And really, it took me to becoming the macker, which I wasn't until my 50s macker, to feel like I properly belonged to my country. Because people would always stop you, despite your accent, despite your mannerisms, despite. Despite your language, despite your knowledge, despite your everything. They would ask you where you were from all the time, and they would think that they wouldn't actually hear how you spoke because they were so busy focusing on how you look. So they say, are you over from America, dear? And things like that. And so that would happen so much. I could write an entire book of different incidents. You know, I was in a shop in Drimmond once, and that place is spelled Dry Men, but it's pronounced Drimmon. Lots of Dry Men about in dreaming, though. And I was in this shop and trying on this top, and this woman came up to me and she said, that color suits you, dear. Where are you from? And I said, I'm from Glasgow. And she said, is that right? Because I've got a friend from the Dominican Republic. And so she didn't mean any harm. And my son had it made in a T shirt for me that year as a Christmas present. In the front it said, I've got a friend from the Dominican Republic. On the back, said, what have you got? And then he took me, as a surprise holiday, to the Dominican Republic. And then once we got to the Dominican Republic, everybody thought that we were both Dominican. And he speaks fluent Spanish. So he said, mom, there's another end to that story. And that was really interesting.
- [19:01]
A
That's so great. You mentioned there that through your work you found some sort of belonging or acceptance to explain to those that people maybe don't know. It's the sort of the Scottish equivalent of the poet laureate, isn't it?
- [19:14]
B
Yeah. The macro is the national poet of Scotland.
- [19:16]
A
Yeah. Why do you think that changed your sense of Scottishness out of interest?
- [19:21]
B
I mean, some of it's absurd, but I may as well tell the truth because I'm speaking to you and you're kind of so good. You're so good. You get the truth out of people somehow. So you're so good at what. You're so good at what you do. I'm a great admirer.
- [19:34]
A
Oh, thank you.
- [19:35]
B
And I just love the. Yeah, I love all the different interests that you have and all the different ways of approaching home. I find it really stimulating and interesting. But, yeah, I think that I felt. Felt that the whole country belonged to me in a way. So if I'd go to Lewis or Harris or Mull or Ardna Marken or Aran or Davies and Galloway or the Highlands or whatever, I think this is my country. I'm the national point of this country. And so that never stopped being exciting. But also, in these places, people would turn out for me in huge numbers and then all sorts of different people would get to hear. So I remember being on the Fennian Benbecula and this man helping me with my luggage and he said to me, am I right in thinking that you're a makar? And I said, I am your macha. And I felt like it gave me special powers or something. And then you turn up in the Isle of Uist, for instance, and the whole place would be packed out and people sitting up in stairs. And I said to the woman that was driving me around the next day, she was in her, like, middle 70s, I said to her, I was surprised last night to see the big lesbian turnout for me. And she said, without missing a beat, she said, aye, we managed to hang on to our lesbians, we lose our gay men, they all gang back to the mainland. And so I felt like all of me was accepted. I felt like that people knew that I was a lesbian. People. And people kind of took great pleasure in having. And I was a very loved macker. I'm not being immodest to say that. I'm just being truthful that I was very loved as a mackerel. So I felt that, yes, all these people suddenly were there and suddenly accepted that I was Scottish. And it seems ridiculous that it should take that length of time and it should take. I mean, not every black Scottish person can become the national poet. And I know I've got lots of black Scottish friends now who have all different experiences of feeling that way. And so I do feel that Scotland still needs to do a lot of work on itself as a country in terms of being inclusive and welcoming diversity. But it's a huge amount better than it was when I was growing up. And as Far as attitudes to sexuality goes, it's actually one of the most progressive countries in the whole of Europe. And that's like, you know, I fled Scotland as a young lesbian, ran down to England because it just didn't feel like a friendly country. And now it is, and now it's changed quite a lot. So I think these are interesting questions because, you know, when you're asking about home, you know, we can answer these questions personally about, you know, mugs and glasses and tables and taste and all of the rest of it. I found Alan's conversation with you totally fascinating.
- [22:18]
A
Oh, Alan de Botton?
- [22:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, I thought he was fascinating. But you can also answer in the sense of, you know, home is a country, home is a set of values, home is politics, home is how your government's run, home is your sense of how your country's operating in the world. Home is your sense of pride at the tartan army in the World cup, for instance, but not necessarily at the footballers themselves. Oops, take that bit out. But anyway. But anyway, you know, and the home is being inspired by people that you feel are from a similar place to you, acting in the world in a way that you feel is wonderful. So, for instance, Kenmure street, when the people of Kenmure street in Glasgow stopped two people being taken out of the country. I don't know if you've seen the film Kenmore street, it's really amazing. I just felt a surge of pride at the Glaswegians that got out in the street to fight against racism and at the kind of organization that they had. And of Glasgow itself, I feel enormously proud of. I'm just back from Glasgow. I just had to write a love letter to Glasgow that will be used for the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony. So I've just finished that now. And it made me realize how intertwined my relationship with Glasgow and being a Glaswegian is to my notions of home.
- [23:37]
A
So interesting. And you've settled now in Manchester, is that right?
- [23:40]
B
Yes, yes. People don't like it in Scotland. Scottish people don't like it when you live in England. She lives down south now. There's terrible judgment about it. You just think, oh, fuck off. Quite right. He should have been friendlier to me then. Years ago. Years ago.
- [24:06]
A
Well, the good thing is it sounds like the relationship's come a long way. But you're in Manchester. Why Manchester?
- [24:11]
B
Well, I lived in London for 20 years before that. And then, you know, I have a son and my then partner, Carol Ann Duffy, had a daughter and we both looked at schools for them. And where we were living in London, we didn't like the schools, so we. We liked the schools in Manchester, so we moved to Manchester. I still wanted to live in multicultural city. I wouldn't have brought my son up in Scotland because there was no city then. He's 37 now, but there was no city then that felt as if he would just be. You know, he could have lots of black friends and teachers and whatever. And I really don't think, and this is a shocking thing to say, I really don't think he'd be the man that he is in the world if I'd brought him up in Scotland.
- [24:55]
A
Yeah. There's a term that sociologists use called elective belonging. And it's this idea that some of us grow up in a place and we feel like we really belong to that place and we kind of spend our whole lives there. And that's actually a really nice way to be. But most of us don't have that experience. Most of us actually have to kind of pick somewhere that we think is hopefully going to work for us and put down roots there. And they call it elective belonging. And they've proven, actually it's just as powerful as being traditionally rooted in a place. If you can find a community that you feel reflects your values, understands you, appreciates you, do you feel that you found that there?
- [25:36]
B
Yeah, I do. I live in a really fantastic community in Charlton in Manchester. Yes. There's probably more vegan lesbians per square mile than there are, or just about as many as there are in Heptonbridge. Not that I'm a vegan lesbian. But, yeah, there's a great kind of book reading community and a great artistic community. It has its own book festival, its own art festival, and people look after its park, Beachwood Park. It's got a huge kind of nature reserve. Right. Just down the road from me, it's got Beach Road, which I live just off Beach Road. And every shop in that road is practically an independent shop. And they all support each other. And yeah, at one point I was thinking of moving away from Charlton. And my son told me, his friend about this, Weejay, he told Weejay that I was going to be moving away from Charlton. Ouija went, but Jackie is Charlton. And I was so toughed at that. I was so touched at that that I've stayed put. No, but, no, I was really kind of chuffed at that because, yeah, loads of people know you and so it feels really friendly. But at the same Time. You've got enough space, I suppose, to be yourself.
- [26:48]
A
Yeah, I'm really pleased to hear it. I'd love to pivot to your book Red Dust Road, which is basically where you set out to find your biological parents. What do you think you are hoping to find and why did you set out on that mission?
- [27:03]
B
Well, I'd already found my birth mother when I was 26 and I was pregnant with my son, and that I found such a traumatic and upsetting experience, I decided that I wouldn't try and find my birth father, ever. And then, aged 42, I was invited to Nigeria to do a tour as a writer for the British Council. And I thought, well, I'm going to my father's country. It seems strange not to try and find him. And so my birth mother had told me his name and I did know that he was a leading academic. And so I was at some conference or something in France and this academic said to me, well, if. If he's an academic, he'll have papers. You just need to type his name into a search engine and he'll come up. And I thought, oh, my God, I can't believe that. I hadn't even thought of that. So I did that. And he did come up and the phone number came up. And so, yeah, my partner, Carol Ann at the time, she called him and got right through. And so that was really interesting that he was a leading ethnobotanist and a world tree specialist. And it was bizarre that I was chasing my family tree and found this tree specialist father. And that's really what led me to reading, writing and Red Dust Road. That led me straight to writing a memoir, which I never would have thought I would try and try that form, but it just seemed that the truth is stranger than fiction. Often that cliche is true and that when your life becomes a story that's happening to you, all you can do if you're a writer, is try and write it down in a way in order to understand it and in order to face some of the things that are challenging and difficult.
- [28:40]
A
So you made contact with him and then what happened?
- [28:43]
B
He came to meet me in Abuja. I didn't know what he looked like. I'd never seen a picture of him. I had all these fantasies from my mum because my mum always liked to try and imagine my birth father. I'm pictured in a pole Robeson figure, Jackie maybe, with a bit of Nelson Mandela mixed in, she'd say, and things like that. So I always had this tall man anyway, so he Was very different to how I'd visually imagined him. And he was wearing a long white African dress. He was smaller in height than me and he was carrying a plastic bag. And he said to me, can we go straight away to your hotel room? So we went straight to my room. He didn't hug me, he didn't anything. He just wanted to go. He seemed like to have a mission that we had to get to this hotel room. So that was odd because I took him to my hotel room and he was my father, but he was also complete stranger. It seemed really bizarre. But anyway. And then he got out the Bible from his plastic bag and he proceeded to give me a two and a half hour sermon, Singing and dancing and clapping around me and clapping and praying. And he had his bare feet moving around. And I noticed at one point in the middle of this sermon that he had the same feet as me. But another point in the middle of the sermon, I realized that he was actually trying to cleanse me. And he saw me as his past sin. And so then that became very disturbing. And he, he didn't want to tell any of his friends or family. He'd come in secret. He hadn't told his wife, hadn't told his children. And he didn't want to tell me anything about his children, not even what, what sexes they were. You know, he just didn't want to. He said if people were to know about you, they would lose their faith in God. Which seemed like a big statement to make and also an incredible power to have.
- [30:27]
A
Okay, wow. So you had that experience in the hotel room with him, and then what, did you go your separate ways after that or what happened then?
- [30:35]
B
No, then we went to eat outside in the hotel, kind of outside bar sort of thing. And he ordered some soup and I ordered something to eat and I ordered a bottle of wine, knocked back a glass in one single gulp and he had a little bit of wine with me, Even though his relig is not to drink yet. He said, what percentage of alcohol is this? About 4%. So I lied and thinking that he might be more fun with the drink in him. So I said, yeah, about 4%. And so he had a drink. And he was having done his sermon and do. And having done what he wanted to do, he seemed to relax. And then he was, he was nice. He was really good company. I know he was interesting, but that was the only time I met him. And then he was kind of. He said. So you said in your letter that you didn't want to answer to A man. And you're not married. So if you're not married and you do not have a boyfriend or such, how do you cater with your sex drive? He said to me, which seemed a really kind of unfatherly question to ask. And I said, well, the woman that you spoke to on the telephone, she's my partner. And he said, how so? And I said, well, she's my partner. We've been together for 15 years. And he went, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. You mean you're a lesbian? And I said, yes, that's right. I'm a lesbian. And he went, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Which one of you is the man?
- [32:00]
A
Your life story is unbelievably fascinating, Jackie. Thank you for sharing all that. I mean, so that was the. Was that the only proper time you spent with him? Then?
- [32:08]
B
You said, yeah, I tried to. Seven years later, I decided that I was just accepting that he wouldn't let me meet my brothers or sisters or whatever. I knew that he had four children. He told me he had four. And each time I tried to find out something about them on that single meeting, he'd say, jackie K. Jackie K. Digging again. Digging again. I quite like that because I am a taker. And I thought, oh, yeah, he's got that right. That made me feel known. For a brief moment, I felt a rush of love. I felt a rush of love for him. And it is a funny thing because, you know, yeah, you are actual relative strangers. But then I thought, you know, I was. I was invited to Nigeria again for a second time, but this time from my friend Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, to go and do a writing workshop and do some readings. And all my Nigerian friends didn't think that it was acceptable. They said it wasn't the Nigerian way, how my father was, and that he wasn't behaving as he, you know, that all Nigerians have to recognize your blood, and that's what you do. And they say ancestral home, and you have to know where your ancestral home is. You can't be denied these things. And so I was. I was with a whole load of people that were getting really wound up on my behalf and therefore kind of winding me up. And then we had a kind of stroke of luck where we worked out that a friend of Chimamanda's had actually been to university with who must have been my brother Emeka. And we found him, and we found, through a series of coincidences, the other brother. And so just as I was about to leave Nigeria. I met that brother. But before then, I also found out where the ancestral home was, and I went to visit it without anybody there. It's always complicated trying to find out stuff about yourself. I mean, for anybody that's done this, it's just because you almost become a private investigator in your own life and you're putting together clues that are that buzz with significance for you. But then I went to his ancestral village and there was nobody to welcome me. And then I went to the market there, and all the people in that part of Nigeria and eastern Nigeria were so somebody. My color was quite unusual. And the friend that I was with, a man called Kashi, was kind of quite protective of me and worried that I was going to get kidnapped and everything. And then suddenly these women in the marketplace started going, oibo, ibo, ibo. And I turned to Kashi and was quite excited. And I said, oh, they can recognize in my face that my father was an Igbo. And I thought, you know, because they were all Igbo, and I felt really excited that they could see in my face I was an Igbo. And Kashi looked really embarrassed, and he went, jackie oy bo is a pidgin word for white woman. So that was really kind of awful and really devastating. And it was the first time in my life that I actually felt mixed race because I always just defined myself as black and Scottish. I didn't like mixed race, didn't like half caste. I didn't like all these different terms. I just thought, I'm kind of Afro, Scott. Black, Scottish, you know. But then I actually felt like, yeah, no, I am mixed race, because people in Nigeria are not responding to me like I'm their sister. Do you spend your whole childhood being called all these different racist names and having fascist posters put up about your university with razor blades behind them? And then you go to Nigeria and you have people say, oibo, oibo. So it was very upsetting.
- [35:26]
A
It's really upsetting. I mean, what did all of this do to the way that you saw your adoptive parents, your white adoptive parents? You know, this struggle with your identity is so clear to see. It's so obvious that anyone would feel conflicted about their identity in these kind of circumstances. But how did you feel about them after meeting your birth father and going through that experience?
- [35:48]
B
Well, I always felt very, very lucky to be with my adoptive parents. I mean, I always felt that they were the right people for me. You know, like, if I had a forest of Trees. And I'd pick two trees out to be my parents. They would be the two trees. And I always felt like, you know, that. I mean, I'm not particularly religious, but I felt as if fate had put us together through a series of different. A web of coincidences. But once I actually met my birth father and had met my birth mother, I felt that with capital letters, thank God I was adopted. Lots of exclamation marks and a few at the end, because both my birth parents were kind of religious fanatics in one way or another. My birth mother was a Mormon and my birth father was a born again Christian. And both of them were kind of ruled in a sense by the belief, in the sense that it didn't allow them to see other things. You know, my birth father didn't want to even open a book of mine or look at it or even read a letter from my son. He was so focused on religion. When I came back from Nigeria, I was telling my mom about this meeting and I got up because I'm, you know, I'm a ham actress. So I got up and performed my father, my birth father in the living room in front of her, doing the clapping, doing the dancing, doing the spinning around, doing the hands above the head and below the waist, doing the whole thing. And my mom found it so funny that she kind of lifted her legs in the air and kind of, you know, off her recliner, off the recliner chair, lifted the legs in the air and like kicked them back and forth, you know, and was killing herself laughing. And it was only then that I realized that there was a lot of humor in it, which I hadn't really. Obviously at the time, I didn't really find it funny. And at the time, after he left that day, I had to go and lie down. I had a terrible migraine for about four hours. But I realized that it was funny. And that translated into. And every sort of tragic or challenging situation in life, grief, funerals, whatever, lives side by side with humor, you know, tragedy and comedy. They're very close to those bunk beds was talking about. So I realized then that I could probably write about it if I had the right tone. But I also realized then that my mum and my dad, they were the people that I belonged to. And I felt even more strongly that I did. But finding my original parents was never about anything to do with them. It was about a real deep curiosity which my mom had herself. She encouraged me to do it. She was really curious. She wanted to know the stories behind her children in these Baskets, my brother also traced his family and she was really supportive and curious. It was my dad that found it problematic just because he loved us and he didn't want another father in the picture.
- [38:26]
A
Just picking up on something you said there. You said that you had a bad migraine after that experience, which is totally understandable. We all have these kind of somatic bodily responses to our emotions. And I'm just curious. You've obviously been through a huge amount. You know, we talk a lot about the body being a home as well. You know, the body itself and the mind, they're a form of home. Have you experienced difficulties in that area through your life or. Not so much.
- [38:53]
B
I know I really, really do believe that the body is a home. For some people, the body is a temple, but for other people it's a bungalow, and for other people it's a high rise flat or a tenement. But I wrote a whole long poem about this called Where It Hurts, which is about the body and the country combined, using my mum as a kind of. The voice of. It is her voice, but it's the voice of illness through the centuries, how the illness, the body and what's going on in the country are all wrapped up together. And for me, that's the only time in my life that I ever had a migraine. And I've never had one since. So it was. I mean, I have friends that have migraines to describe them to me. And I feel. But it's the only time that I've ever had one. So whatever it was in that meeting compressed my head. It was almost too. It was too much to take in. And also I'd gone without any support. I didn't have any friends with me for that first meeting. You know, I had somebody from the British Council that didn't know me very well, that was coming to pick me up the next day to take me to do events with school kids. But I didn't have anybody to talk to about it. I made little films myself in the room. I filmed myself. And they're. They're kind of really desperate to see now. So, yeah, I think that whenever anything difficult happens in my life, it does go straight to a part of my body and I'm very conscious of that. You know, I had a bad motorbike accident and since then I have kind of circulation problems. So if my feet are very swollen, I know that something's. Something's up. If my back goes, I know that something's up. These days, you know, my son got me a six Month membership to gym in Manchester and looked around him to check which one I'd be most comfortable in, which was really lovely. So I've been kind of working on building the body and getting fitter, just because. Not really as an aesthetic thing, really, but more to do with feeling stronger in the physical body. And it's quite amazing, the difference that that makes.
- [40:52]
A
Definitely agree with that, 100%.
- [40:54]
B
What do you do for your body, Matt?
- [40:57]
A
I was interested that you said that you were a runner, because I've always been a runner as well. And, you know, for me, it's very, very instinctive. That thing of just getting outside in the air, in the trees and just running and that sort of. It's almost meditative, isn't it? The act of putting one foot in front of the other. I mean, people talk a lot about meditation, mindfulness and so on, and I'm not massively good at that because I'm quite a restless character. But actually running, I find very mindful.
- [41:25]
B
Running's so meditative. It's so philosophical in a way, because as you're running, your head's freed up, you can think things from the trivial things to. Must remember that, must do that. And then sudden, once you're running for a while, something clears in your head and you go into a different state altogether. So it is extraordinary, an extraordinary thing. I really do miss running. I can't run anymore, though, because one leg's quite a bit shorter than the other, and that was a year and a half before I could walk again. So it did make me into a writer. But even just the memory of running, I love.
- [41:56]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [41:57]
B
My son's taken to running recently because he broke both his wrists and so he was doing all this bodybuilding and now he's not been able to do that because the wrists are. So he's had to be fit in other ways. And it's actually been good for him in some ways because he's actually taking in the rivers and the marshes and where he lives in Hackney and seeing people and being out and all of that's really good for you, I think.
- [42:20]
A
I totally agree. There's a phenomenon called the place ballet, which I really love, which is this environmental idea that you consciously map an area in your mind as you move through it. And I think the more time you spend in a place, the more it sort of becomes a part of you, your mind, your body. And when I go running locally here, I run along the river. I don't know, I feel like I get to know it a Little bit better every time there's a particular heron that soars on the same branch and there's a trout that swims under the bridge and, you know, it feels. It makes you feel like you're part of something that's a bit more significant than you are. It takes you out of yourself a bit. Right.
- [42:55]
B
Yeah. We're all interconnected and we should. The more connected we are to the. To the trees, to the rivers, to the birds, to the creatures. And the more that we notice things, the better we'll be. The better we'll look after our planet as well, because we, you know, you don't destroy the thing that you love or you shouldn't. And so I think it's really important, our relationship with where we live and how we. How we are to it. I like walking a lot, so I have long walks and I just come back, like I say, from Scotland, because I'm writing a book about Scotland at the moment and about home, because I'm already thinking about these things quite a lot. It has a question underneath it that I'm asking, which is, do you belong to a country in the same way once your parents have died? I'm not sure that I'm going to answer that question, but that's a question that's underneath things. But anyway, so I was in Aberfeldie just the other day and I went to the Burks of Aberfeldy, which is where Burns, Robert Burns wrote his. This famous song, the Burks of Aberfeldy. And I went there and I climbed up to the gorge and it was quite a strenuous. Well, for me, it was quite strenuous. For you, it'd be toffee. And I got to the top and I was quite. Not great with heights, you know, in this rushing water. But I had to do it because I had to sit in the seat that Burns sat in, you know, one of the original mackers. And then, luckily for me, I bumped into this woman. I found out her name was Antonia. And I told her that I was not good with heights. She could have encouraged me. And then when I asked her what she did, she said she was a psychologist. So only me could find my own psychologist, who is not nobody from miles around that helps me get to the kind of. The mouth of this. Only me could do that. It was just like. It was like a fairy tale, you know, of different things going on. But I felt so connected with that place and I was really glad that I'd made the effort to get to the gorge to get to the source of the water. And I felt connected and I felt a kind of weird sense of going back hundreds of years, as if I was there in time now, but I was also going back to Burns's time and a sense of a place existing and being more or less the same place. It's a kind of magical, otherworldly place and how good that is for us, for our spirits, for our soul, to find ourselves in places that almost take ourselves away, to give ourselves back, if you know what I mean.
- [45:14]
A
Yeah, that's a lovely way of putting it. Cool. I could talk to you forever, Jackie.
- [45:18]
B
I'm aware I could talk to you forever.
- [45:20]
A
So interesting. I suppose what I'd love to do to sort of round things off would be to think about if someone listening, you know, it's grappling with their identity in some way or their belonging feels like they don't fit in. Quite. Based on your experience, what would you encourage them to think about, do you think?
- [45:40]
B
Well, I think that the first thing that you have to think, if you're not feeling that you belong somewhere, you have to ask yourself why that is. Are other people making you feel like that? And if so, change your friends, change the people, change what you can change and then claim a place. You know, claim the place in England, in Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, London, lots of black Brummies, black Mancunians have claimed the place and feel very much, yeah, very much part of a place in Scotland, in Glasgow, there's lots of black glass regions now that have claimed a place, and whole parts of the city that feel very vibrant and very, very diverse. But that's taken quite a while. I think any person that comes to a place from another place has a tentative sense of belonging. And it takes other people to make them feel welcome, to make them feel at home. It's all of our responsibilities to make people that are tentative in a place feel at home, feel welcome in all the different ways that we can do that. From smiling at a person in a bus to bringing somebody something when they've moved in, to just being cognizant of who's moving in, who's where and how are they, how are they feeling about it? You know, so it's our responsibility to be welcoming, but it's also within our grasp to seize a place, to claim a place and to feel that you have a right to a place. And belonging to a country is such a complex thing. It doesn't have to do with birth, it doesn't have to do with biology or DNA or where your parents came from. It has to do with putting roots in a place and having a right to put roots in a place, a freedom to roam, a right to travel, a right to be complex, to be multiple. We have multiple identities and we have a right to them. Never let anybody reduce you and tell you you've got to be less than yourself, be big, be more than yourself. You know, we are multiple. And don't be silent either. Don't feel that you've got to just be silent and smile and laugh to fit in. You know, I know lots of black people my age. We all smile too much, you know, like Jim, Amanda Ngozi, because she talks about not smiling. But, you know, we smile too much because we learned to smile to fit in. People say, you've got lovely teeth, dear. You know, so that, you know, it's. It's annoying. Annoys me about myself, you know, how sometimes that I feel that some of my personality is from. That is from being over polite, being over nice, being over friendly.
- [48:12]
A
So do you think that's sort of people pleasing?
- [48:14]
B
Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely. Really? Yeah, definitely.
- [48:18]
A
Why do you think that you tried to people please in that way?
- [48:21]
B
Because I was in the minority, because I was the only black person there. Because people would have assumptions about you. You had to try and show them you were just like everyone else. But actually, what I'm saying now is, my advice to somebody that's feeling like that is don't try and be like everybody else. Be yourself. Dare to be different. Celebrate yourself, be different. Seize being different. Don't be silent. Like Audre Lorde said, the great African American poet, your silence will not protect you. Be yourself. For me, I'm really lucky that I found writing so young, so I was able to be myself on the page. And the National Library of Scotland have now got my archives, which is another home, home for the archive. And it was great fun getting moving all these things a bit upsetting because, you know, some of these notebooks went right back to when I was seven. I kept them all for some reason, never thinking that they would end up in the National Library of Scotland, that that would be their ultimate home. But even so, there they are. And you know, there's an exhibition at the National Library at the moment of national treasures. And there's this notebook in this exhibition box that I wrote in Nigeria. And it's got the whole meeting with my birth father in this notebook, which this archivist who's a genius, amazing, amazing guy called Dan Shealy, he knows more about me than I know about myself now, an Irish man, he came across it and then he looked. He reread Red Dust Road and found that some of this notebook had ended up in Red Dust Road. But I had absolutely no memory of writing that notebook. So that's the interesting thing, you know, that we're paper trails when we're writers. We've got notebooks, we've got other ways of telling the time and other ways of saying what happened to us and other ways of reforming ourselves. So I would really encourage anybody, whether you identify as being a writer or not, to take up something artistic because it gives you another voice. Take up a notebook, take up a camera, take up a paintbrush, take up gardening, take up cooking. Take up something that's going to be just yours and you're going to put your own stamp on it, because the more things that you have that are just yours, take up a saxophone, a trumpet, take up running. But take up something. Have as many interests as possible, so as your interests will insulate you from harm. And be yourself and be proud to be yourself. I came out when I was 16, and I'm very proud that I did come out at 16. It wasn't easy coming out at 16 in the 70s. It wasn't easy even coming out to my mom, who told me that I was becoming somebody she didn't know or understand. She said, you won't be Jackie anymore, when I asked her how she'd feel if I told her that I was a lesbian. But she changed massively. Because when you love people, you change with them. So when you're asking about home, our sense of home constantly changes as we do, and our sense of how at home we feel at any given moment changes when we do. And probably grief for me, as a lifetime experience, is the most shattering thing that's ever happened to my sense of home. I do have this room in my house here, which is my study, which I actually don't go into. And it's full of all these boxes that I haven't managed to sort out from my mum, my mum and dad's house and my brothers. I mean, I had to clear their whole houses, both of their houses, so most of the stuff went. Some went into storage. And then my boy Matt, he's called as well, had the bright idea that we shouldn't keep in storage and we must bring it to my study. And if we brought it to my study, I'd be sure to sort it out. And I haven't. I actually can't face it. So that's a kind of limbo thing. And I know that it's not healthy, but there you go. I've admitted it to you. That feels really good. I've not told anybody this, but it has to come out the program. I feel deep shame about it. But anyway,
- [52:06]
A
I think it's very common. I think it's very natural. I really do. It's been such a memorable conversation for me, and I really. Yeah, I'm very appreciative of it. So, yeah, thank you so much for talking to me.
- [52:17]
B
Thank you, Matt. It's been a pleasure. And, you know, when you did your very first one of these, what was it that provoked you or prompted it?
- [52:27]
A
Well, the reason that I do this is because I grew up in a very loving, safe environment, and yet, despite that, I never really fully felt at home within my own skin. And so a lot of my work has been a kind of a quest to try and understand that and understand how you create a feeling of home, both externally but also ultimately within yourself. So I'm really interested in this link between our environment and our true selves. You know, I went through a long period of severe anxiety, particularly in relation to certain spaces I came across certain environments. And so I've sought to try and understand how things like light, space, acoustics, but also feeling rooted in a place can have a transformative effect on how you feel in the world and how you move through the world. So that's really what I'm trying to achieve.
- [53:27]
B
Can I propose something to you?
- [53:29]
A
Please.
- [53:29]
B
I would like to interview you. I'd like to do another podcast where we do it the other way around.
- [53:34]
A
Yes, please. That'd be wonderful.
- [53:35]
B
I think it'd just be so fantastic, and we could. We could have our mirror conversation.
- [53:41]
A
What a great idea.
- [53:42]
B
I just find you really interesting, and I think for all your listeners, they would find that interesting. And if you didn't mind, and obviously, you know, I'd be very respectful. But I just think it would just be such a good idea because, you know, I'm a writer, but I actually find other people more interesting than myself. And I really. It's been slightly. It's been slightly frustrating for me. I mean, I've loved our conversation, but it's been frustrating for me because I know that you're interviewing me, and I haven't been able to turn the tables as much as I'd like to and ask you things. Like, I did get in the thing about running, and that was good. But I really would love to. I'd love to so anyway, have a think about that.
- [54:13]
A
Definitely. I'm up for it. Yeah, we'll do that. We'll set that up. Thank you to the wonderful Jackie K. And thanks to all of you for listening along as well. A reminder that you can sign up to be a Homing member on Patreon, which gets you access to behind the scenes house tours with our guests. If you can spare the time, we'd also really appreciate a friendly review on Apple or Spotify. You'll find us at Homing with Matt. This episode was produced by Pod Shop with music by Simeon Walker. Thanks again, folks and talk to you next time. Bye. Bye.