Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay - August 2011

[Clare Bookclub Mod]

I heard Jackie Kay speak about her autobiographical novel on the radio recently and was captivated by her story tracing her birth parents. I was equally impressed and moved by her honesty in sharing the details of this very personal journey.

Red Dust Road opens in the Nicon Hilton Hotel in Abuja. Jackie Kay is confronted by the man who is her natural father. He is a born-again Christian and self-styled faith healer who prays over her for two hours. He is disappointed by her failure to give herself to Christ, the condition required by him to acknowledge her publicly as his daughter. "I am sitting here," writes Kay, "evidence of his sinful past, but I am the sinner, the living embodiment of his sin." Kay resists. They do not meet again.

For the previous 40 years Kay's existence had been kept secret from the families of both her natural father and her birth mother. Kay was born in 1961 in Edinburgh to a Scottish nurse and a Nigerian student. Soon afterwards she was adopted. Red Dust Road is Kay's 20-year search for her birth parents and for her existence to be recognised.