Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay explores every facet of this most overwhelming and complicated of human emotions. In her distinctive voice, simultaneously fierce and delicate, she exposes the moments of tenderness, of shock, of bravery and stupidity that accompany the search for love, the discovery of love and, most of all, love's loss. Every story here resonates with bittersweet lucidity. Fearlessly scrutinizing her characters at their moments of greatest vulnerability, Kay brings the chaotic experience of love - and of simply living - into crystalline focus.

The author presents the great blues singer, from her early days with Ma and Pa Rainer in the Moses Stokes Travelling Show, through her disastrous marriage and various lesbian affairs to her wild lifestyle on the road in her yellow Pullman railroad car.

62 p. ; 22 cm

64p. ; 22cm

"Fiere - Scots for 'companion, friend, equal' - is a vivid description of the many paths our lives take, and of how those journeys are made meaningful by our companions on the road: lovers, friends, parents, children, mentors - as well as all the remarkable and chance acquaintances we would not otherwise have made. Written with Kay's trademark wit and flair, infused with both Scots and Igbo speech, it is also a fascinating account of the formation of a self-identity - and the discovery of a tongue that best honours it. ..."--Back cover.

Tired of his mother's overprotectiveness and intrigued by the life of African American explorer Matthew Henson, twelve-year-old Alvin travels north and spends a season with a trapper near the Arctic Circle.

From the moment when, as a little girl, she realises 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.