Name: Adoption Papers
ISBN: 9781852241568

Jackie Kay

Adoption Papers

Gavin

Strong, po-faced verse portrait of her own birth and adoption, in three voices. Really lovely details throughout – her mother hiding all her Communist décor for first meeting the birth mother; Kay kissing her poster of Angela Davis goodnight, a traumatic, funny dismissal of the idea that your real mother has to be your birth mother (“After mammy telt me she wisna my real mammy I wis scared to death she wis gonna melt…”). 

Meeting her bio-mum much later, Kay’s disillusionment is subtly and truly done: “the blood does not bind confusion” (mop it up, like carbon dioxide). It becomes apparent that Kay has just created the birth mother character – her mouth filled with vivid Plathian violence and articulate confusion not born out by the real woman. If so, more the better. 

See also ‘I try my absolute best’, a perfect snapshot of misguided C20th hippy despair at agrichemicals.

Adoption Papers

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