Red Dust Road
Jackie Kay
2011 Nominee
Scottish Book Awards Non-fiction Award
2011 Nominee
National Book Awards Biography of the Year
2011 Winner
Scottish Book Awards Book of the Year
Synopsis
Taking the reader from Glasgow to Lagos and beyond, Red Dust Road is a heart-stopping memoir, a story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny.
With an introduction by the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon.
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.
‘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
A clear-eyed, witty and unsentimental account of the push and pull between nature and nurture. Happiness shines throughSunday Times
Wonderful, humane . . . This is a book with resolution, determination and honestyScotland 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 journeySunday Herald