Red Dust Road Analysis

Bethany Swerdon

998859353

04/14/2019
 They say you have to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes to understand their life. It is

safe to say that Author Jackie Kay was able to transport us into her life of adoption by meeting

her adoptive parents as well as her birth parents. The memoir provides a deep emotional

connection that helps us feel how the adoptee feels.

Jackie easily demonstrated her relationships with her birth parents, adoptive parents and

adoptive brother through an informal style focused on telling things exactly as they happened

instead of trying to analysis and speak from a more formal point. This was demonstrated when

she was discussing meeting her Nigerian birth father and how he prayed for her in front of her

for about an hour which made her uncomfortable because she did not have religious beliefs and

that was in her 40’s and basically tells her that unless she accepts the faith and becomes a born

again believer there is no place for her in his life and won’t tell his current family about her.

The memoir also provides insight into Jackie’s adoptive parents struggle with pregnancy

which led them to adoption. Jackie and her adoptive brother are both adoptees because her mum

and dad could not conceive. Jackie provides insight on the struggles her adoptive parents faced in

her memoir when her adoptive mother talks about how the only adoption agencies were religious

back then and they didn’t want to lie about attending church, which they did not in order to adopt

a child. Her mum talks about the fear she faced that if they lied about attending regular church

service and the agency checked up on them that Jackie and her brother could be taken off of

them. She went on to explain that the adoption laws in Glasgow were that children have to reside

with you for two years before it was permanent, at birth mothers were given six months if they

regretted their decision and wanted their children back.

 After, Jackie was adopted her birth mother requested a picture of her from her adoptive

parents about 6 months after the adoption which is an interesting request that was completed by

Jackie’s adoptive mother. I thought this provided great insight into the adoption practices over

there because back in the 1950s and 1960s most adoptions in the United States were closed.

Jackie explains throughout her memoir what lovely people her adoptive parents, Helen

and John Kay are and that to her they are her only mum and dad. She demonstrates throughout

her writing that they were still alive and, in their seventies, and resided in the same house she

grew up in and had fond memories there.

Another aspect that the memoir touches on is how Jackie’s adoptive father wants nothing

to do or hear about regarding Jackie’s search and meeting with her birth father. According, to

Jackie’s mum it isn’t that he doesn’t want her to look for him or meet him but it is the fact that he

feels threatened. This memoir gave perspective on the adoptive parents, we often think how it

affects the child; the unknown of the birth parents, the tracing for information to find them and

establishing relationships. Jackie’s dad felt threatened that she was going to meet her birth father

and her relationship with her adoptive father was going to suffer.

Something that I picked up on that I didn’t quite understand was that Jackie had her own

child named Matthew, however she was unmarried. This information in the book was shocking

to me. I thought that Jackie would have wanted the upbringing she had to be like the Kay’s. I

would have thought that she wanted or needed someone to help with child rearing rather that do

it alone especially given that Jackie was brought up with adoptive parents.
 This book is self-evident of the possible outcomes adoptees face when trying to find their

birth parents years later. Adoptees tend to have images in their heads of what their birth parents

are like only for them to be shattered or underestimated when they meet their birth parents or talk

to them.

Jackie Kay explains the situation adoptees face in this memoir the best by saying, “There

are essentially two kinds of adopted people: the ones who never trace, who never want to, are not

interested, or who are frightened of hurting their adoptive parents’ feelings. And the ones who

want to trace, who are curious about the origins, who think that in tracing their origins, who think

that in tracing their original parents they will understand themselves better” (Kay, 2010).

.
 Reference

Kay, J. (2010). Red dust road. London: Picador