Reading Jackie Kay's The Adoption Papers (1990-1991)


Book Description

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: HS Gender and 20th-century Autobiography, language: English, abstract: This seminar paper deals with: "BODY: Reading Jackie Kay’s The Adoption Papers (1990-1991)" INTRODUCTION 1 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING 2 PODOROGA’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF BODY 3 DAUGHTER’S BODY 3.1 BODY-OBJECT 3.1.1 Wounded body 3.1.2 Dead body 3.1.3 Being touched 3.1.4 Being commanded 3.1.5 Examined body 3.2 BODY-“MY-BODY” 3.3. BODY-AFFECT CONCLUSION




The Adoption Papers


Book Description

This work tells the story of a black girl's adoption by a white Scottish couple. The story is told from three different viewpoints - the mother, the birth mother and the daughter.




The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature


Book Description

THE WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANION TO CONTEMPORARY BRITISH AND IRISH LITERATURE An insightful guide to the exploration of modern British and Irish literature The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature is a must-have guide for anyone hoping to navigate the world of new British and Irish writing. Including modern authors and poets from the 1960s through to the 21st century, the Companion provides a thorough overview of contemporary poetry, fiction, and drama by some of the most prominent and noteworthy writers. Seventy-three comprehensive chapters focus on individual authors as well as such topics as Englishness and identity, contemporary Science Fiction, Black writing in Britain, crime fiction, and the influence of globalization on British and Irish Literature. Written in four parts, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature includes comprehensive examinations of individual authors, as well as a variety of themes that have come to define the contemporary period: ethnicity, gender, nationality, and more. A thorough guide to the main figures and concepts in contemporary literature from Britain and Ireland, this two-volume set: Includes studies of notable figures such as Seamus Heaney and Angela Carter, as well as more recently influential writers such as Zadie Smith and Sarah Waters. Covers topics such as LGBT fiction, androgyny in contemporary British Literature, and post-Troubles Northern Irish Fiction Features a broad range of writers and topics covered by distinguished academics Includes an analysis of the interplay between individual authors and the major themes of the day, and whether an examination of the latter enables us to appreciate the former. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature provides essential reading for students as well as academics seeking to learn more about the history and future direction of contemporary British and Irish Literature.




Reading Postwar British and Irish Poetry


Book Description

Combining detailed explorations of both mainstream and experimental poets with a clear historical and literary overview, Reading Postwar British and Irish Poetry offers readers at all levels an ideal guide to the rich body of poetic works published in Britain and Ireland over the last half-century. Features detailed discussions of individual poems that are widely available in anthologies and selected poems volumes Pays explicit attention to how to read the poems, focusing on language and form and the institutional conditions of literary possibility in which poets worked Includes poets of all types and styles from throughout the post-war period, including canonical and mainstream poets alongside experimental poets, women, and poets of color







Darling


Book Description

'Darling' brings together many favourite poems from Kay's four 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.




Post-Colonial and African American Women's Writing


Book Description

This accessible and unusually wide-ranging book is essential reading for anyone interested in postcolonial and African American women's writing. It provides a valuable gender and culture inflected critical introduction to well established women writers: Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, Suniti Namjoshi, Bessie Head, and others from the U.S.A., India, Africa, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and introduces emergent writers from South East Asia, Cyprus and Oceania. Engaging with and clarifying contested critical areas of feminism and the postcolonial; exploring historical background and cultural context, economic, political, and psychoanalytic influences on gendered experience, it provides a cohesive discussion of key issues such as cultural and gendered identity, motherhood, mothertongue, language, relationships, women's economic constraints and sexual politics.




Out of Bounds


Book Description

Presents a collection of poems by black and Asian writers.




Reading Contemporary Black British and African American Women Writers


Book Description

Contemporary African American and Black British Women Writers: Narrative, Race, Ethics brings together British and American scholars to explore how, in texts by contemporary black women writers in the U. S. and Britain, formal narrative techniques express new understandings of race or stimulate ethical thinking about race in a reader. Taken together, the essays also demonstrate that black women writers from both sides of the Atlantic borrow formal structures and literary techniques from one another to describe the workings of structural racism in the daily lives of black subjects and to provoke readers to think anew about race. Narratology has only recently begun to use race as a category of narrative theory. This collection seeks both to show the ethical effects of narrative form on individual readers and to foster reconceptualizations of narrative theory that account for the workings of race within literature and culture.




The Lamplighter


Book Description

‘Ambitious, defiant, angry and gripping . . . the bitter story of slavery through the experience of four women’ Guardian 'Jackie Kay’s work, formally expansive and inclusive . . . is always about the opening up of our notions of identity' Ali Smith, author of How to Be Both In The Lamplighter award-winning poet and Scottish Makar Jackie Kay takes us on a journey into the dark heart of Britain’s legacy in the slave trade. First produced as a play, on the page it reads as a profound and tragic multi-layered poem. We watch as four women and one man tell the story of their lives through slavery, from the fort, to the slave ship, through the middle passage, following life on the plantations, charting the growth of the British city and the industrial revolution. Constance has witnessed the sale of her own child; Mary has been beaten to an inch of her life; Black Harriot has been forced to sell her body; and our lead, the Lamplighter, was sold twice into slavery from the ports in Bristol. Their different voices sing together in a rousing chorus that speaks to the experiences of all those brutalised by slavery, and lifts in the end to a soaring and powerful conclusion. Stirring, impassioned and deeply affecting, The Lamplighter remains as essential today as the day it was first performed. This is an essential work by one of our most beloved writers.