Essay Jacky Kay on conflict

JACKIE KAY ESSAY on the theme of conflict

“[P]eople mistake you, you mistake yourself”. Such is the way the poet Jackie Kay describes an

individual’s relation to others in her poem “Somebody Else” from her poetry collection Darling. Being

black and from half-Nigerian descent while living in a predominantly white country, namely Scotland,

Jackie Kay has faced many hardships, challenges and discrimination. Indeed, it is precisely this conflict

that she uses in Darling to explore the complexities and struggles of relationships, whether they be

internal and external.

The most personal sort of conflict J.K employs is the internal struggle of understanding one’s

identity, especially in family relationships. This is shown through the ambivalence of relationships;

between belonging and exclusion. For example, in the poem “My Grandmother” J.K uses many terms that

establish her Scottish heritage, such as the lexical field of land (“land”, “croft”) which shows her

connection to her roots, her cultural identity. This is enforced by the mention of the “Gaelic” language and

the pronoun “our”, which clearly show how she feels a belonging to her family. However, this is

somewhat offset by the exclusive negation “There’ll be no darkie baby in this house”, as well as the

antithesis present in the description of her grandmother: “loose bun” becomes “steel wool”. This provides

a more negative feeling concerning her relationship with her grandmother, creating ambivalence, conflict

even, in the description of her family relationships. The complexity of the ambivalent feeling of both

belonging and exclusion is clearly present. This ambivalent relationship with her grandmother is further

explored in the poem “My Grandmother’s Houses”. Even though there is a proximity between the two

characters (speaker and grandmother) present in the poem, which is understood through the fact that they

go everywhere together (bed, church, work...), there is also a certain distance because of the lack of the

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person plural pronouns such as “we” or “our”. The relationship between speaker and grandmother is a

complex one, with inherent struggles and conflicts present due to its nuanced nature. Another complex

relationship explored is the relationship between the child J.K and her birth mother. This is illustrated in

the poem “Baby Lazarus” from “The Adoption Papers”, as well as “The Meeting Dream”. In “Baby

Lazarus”, the voice of the birth mother in the last stanza employs two somewhat contradictory lexical

fields: death and renewal. For example, words such as “buried” and “old” are used in conjunction with

terms such as “swell” and “promise of a crop”. What’s more, a personification of the frost biting is offset

by an extended metaphor of agriculture being rebirth, as well as the religious image of Lazarus, a man

raised from the dead by Jesus Christ. As such, we clearly have two opposing feelings, death and rebirth,

which portrays the inner turmoil of the birth mother as she tries to come to terms with her relationship to

her daughter. She is a complex character dealing with complex family relationships, and the conflict of

the ambivalence of her speech portrays this. This ambivalent relationship J.K has with her birth mother is

also explored in “The Meeting Dream”, where she uses two ongoing repetitions, of stones and water

(“stone”, “sea”, “rocks”, “water”), while describing her biological maternal figure. This shows how her

birth mother is simultaneously loose (hence the water) and close (hence the stones). As such, J.K manages

to portray a complex and nuanced relationship by using ambivalence to illustrate the complexities and the

conflicts that come with such complexity.

Furthermore, Jackie Kay also uses conflict to explore the struggles of external relationships,

namely with society. Jackie Kay is no stranger to discrimination and as such racism is a reoccurring

theme, for example in “Gone with the Wind”. The title is actually the same as a well-known book and

film which feature slavery and “blackface”. This intertextual reference allows the reader to understand the

topic of racism which underlines the poem. This is made even more apparent with the direct reference to

“blackface”, “big grin and white rolling eyes”. In this way J.K manages to set up the notion of racism and

discrimination, of a struggle within society. This conflict is then brought to the

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