Jackie Kay: Critical Essays offers the first full-length critical study of Kay’s work. It brings together a range of essays by international scholars to examine the work of a writer who has expanded the scope of British literature.
Jackie Kay is the author of 30 works, including plays, poetry, prose, children’s literature, and short stories. She was the Scots Makar (the national poet) from 2016-2021 and has won or been shortlisted for over 20 literary awards and prizes. This collection addresses the full range of Kay’s writing, from her earliest poetry and fiction of the 1980s through to her most recent publications, including her lesser-examined works such as her dramas and her writing for children. Significant themes and concerns, including race, national identity, family and life writing, gender and sexuality, are all examined in new critical essays that greatly expand understanding of Kay’s canon. The contributors show that Kay’s work is remarkable for its range of genres, its consistent reinvention of forms, and its marriage of intimate, domestic depictions of individual lives with broad political and philosophical themes.
This book is aimed at students and scholars of contemporary British fiction, Black British literature, Scottish literature, and contemporary women’s writing.
Jackie Kay: Critical Essays offers the first full-length critical study of Jackie Kay’s work. It brings together a range of essays by international scholars to examine a writer who has expanded the scope of British literature.
Arvustused
A fantastic new resource on the crucial work of Scottish poet Jackie Kay, Jackie Kay: Critical Essays breaks boundaries by being the first book-length study of her writing. A rich array of essays explores the whole spectrum of Kays work, including her drama and writing for children, and extends all the way to her 2024 collection May Day. Jackie Kay emerges from these pages as among the most significant British writers of our time always most in earnest and moving when most witty and dry. Her work affirms a deep sense of connectedness to these islands: My country, she observes, has started to speak my language / And I am no longer alone.
Elleke Boehmer, FRSL FRHistS, Professor of World Literature in English, University of Oxford
A book that stays true to the generous spirit that is Jackie Kay, this collection illuminates the richness and range of her work. By situating her writing in different critical and theoretical contexts, it makes clear the political and artistic significance it has acquired over many years. Each of the essays offers a thoughtful perspective on an aspect of her career and the impact of this wonderful writer shines through them all.
Glenda Norquay, Professor Emerita, Scottish Literary Studies
Foreword: Full Fig - Jackie Kay; Introduction - Tasha Alden and Fiona
Tolan;
1. Opening Out: Jackie Kays Many Voices - Nancy K. Gish;
2. From
Great White Mothers to Black Sisters: Jackie Kay, Feminism and the 1980s
-Fiona Tolan;
3. The Presence that Absence Makes: the Aesthetic of the
Secret in Jackie Kays Trumpet - C.J. Griffin;
4. Stacy Ann Creech and Karen
Sands-OConnor, My Face is a Map: Place, Truth, and Belonging in Jackie
Kays Childrens Books;
5. Liminality and Intimacy in Jackie Kays Wish I
Was Here - Ana Garcia-Soriano;
6. Diversifying Modes of National Identity in
Jackie Kays Fiere - Tara Brusselaers and Elisabeth Bekers;
7. A Museum of
Voices: Ekphrastic Encounters in the Poetry of Jackie Kay - Lourdes
López-Ropero;
8. Jackie Kays Monumental Poetics - Deirdre Osborne;
9. The
Romance of Scottish Communism: Politics and the Family in Jackie Kays May
Day - Peter Ely; Index
Tasha Alden is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British Fiction at Aberystwyth University, UK. She has written on a range of twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers, and her research interests include medical humanities, ethics and empathy, the historical novel, literature and theology, and queer writing.
Fiona Tolan is Reader in Contemporary Womens Writing at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. She is author of The Fiction of Margaret Atwood (2023) and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism (with Rachel Carroll; 2024).
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