Jackie Kay Knihy

What is a city? Do people make cities or do cities make people? And can cities have second lives? We all inhabit cities, but what do they mean to us? What do we mean to them? Is the city a real thing in the 21st century? How do we integrate their pasts to their futures? What are the threats facing cities in the western world? These are just some of the questions posed by the fascinating studies in this book. Through essays, poems, psychogeography, short stories, and more, an array of today’s leading writers and thinkers join together to look at cities in the western world. Focusing on the two former industrial heartlands of Glasgow and Pittsburgh, this international and diverse collection is asking the big questions and getting the most creative answers. From Will Self’s psychogeography of Glasgow, to National Book Award winner Terrance Hayes’ stunning poetry, this collection will make you think, feel, fear, and fight for what part cities play in our daily lives. Bold, diverse, and daring, these pieces are a must for anyone who cares about where we live and what it means to live in the urban sprawl of now. Will Self, Jane Mccaffery, Edwin Morgan, Ewan Morrison, Terrance Hayes, Allan Wilson, Louise Welsh, Kapka Kassabova, Gerald Stern, Doug Johnstone, Lori Jagielka, Hilary Masters, David Kinloch, Yona Harvey, Sharon Dilworth, Lee Gutkind, Richard Wilson, and many more.

A modern classic of enduring love, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize.

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, the journey that Jackie Kay undertakes in Red Dust Road is full of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions. In a book shining with warmth, humour and compassion, she discovers that inheritance is about much more than genes: that we are shaped by songs as much as by cells, and that our internal landscapes are as important as those through which we move. Taking the reader from Glasgow to Lagos and beyond, Red Dust Road is revelatory, redemptive and courageous, unique in its voice and universal in its reach. It is a heart-stopping story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny, and love.

This new book brings together many favourite poems from her four Bloodaxe 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.

Following on from her award-winning first novel, Trumpet, comes a collection of superlative stories. In true Kay style, these small masterpieces cover a great deal of emotional and narrative terrain, from an immaculate observation of the female physiognomy to the bewilderment of the elderly; from silent hidden love to a lifetime reminiscence of an immigrant's England. Warm and tender, frightening and funny, these stories confirm the arrival of a major storyteller. 'A stunner. I am heartbroken to have finished it' Ali Smith 'The beauty of Kay's stories is in how much they continue to resonate long after finishing' TIME OUT 'These pieces contain - and ultimately liberate - definitively human ordinariness, a rigmarole of isolation and love, fidelity and betrayal, noise and silence, birth and death' GUARDIAN 'One of the liveliest talents of her generation' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

Jackie Kay tells the story of a black girl's adoption by a white Scottish couple- from three different the mother, the birth mother, and the daughter.

'She [Bessie Smith] showed me the air and taught me how to fill it ... she's the reason I started singing, really' - Janis Joplin'[Jackie Kay] offers the most vivid evocation of Bessie Smith I have ever read' - Ian Carr, BBC MusicBessie Smith was born in Tennessee in 1894. číst celé

Byobu reveals a rich inner world, one driven by its meticulous attention to our rich outer one.