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Video of the Day: Scottish Poet Laureate Jackie Kay on Growing Up Black and Queer in a White Family

May 2, 2017

Trish Bendix

"If I was to go back, I'd like to go and have a wee word with myself and say 'You can fall in love with who you want to. You can be exactly who you want to be, you can run towards yourself if you like, because it's going to be fine.'"

Poet and novelist Jackie Kay is a Third Scots Makar (a Scottish poet laureate) greatly respected for her prolific body of work, which comes from her perspective as a queer woman of color, especially as it relates to having grown up in a white family. Kay shares her story and why LGBTQs and other marginalized people turn to writing about their identities in this short film directed by Lindsey Dryden, which is also part of the Tate Britain’s current exhibition, “Queer British Art 1861–1967.”