Rac(e)ing Questions III

11      "In My Country," a poem from Kay's collection Other Lovers, encapsulates how these processes of racism can perpetrate feelings of estrangement, and how they can be present in apparently innocent remarks. Written in the first person, it tells of a walk by the sea interrupted by a woman who passes round "as if I were a superstition; / or the worst dregs of her imagination." Eventually being asked by this onlooker "Where do you come from?", the poetic persona answers "Here. These parts" (Lovers 24), emphasis in original). The question, accentuated by its italic print, is said by Kay to insinuate that "you don't belong here" and is one that is loaded with subtle xenophobic undertones (Somerville-Arjat and Wilson 121, emphasis in the original). This interactive quality of belonging-ness and identity is reiterated by Bryan Turner who claims that: "[T]he body is the most proximate and immediate feature of my social self, a necessary feature of my social location and of my personal enselfment" (8). Much of Mary Douglas' renowned work in the field of anthropology is based on this symbiosis between the situatedness of the body and an individual's agency (see for example Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology). If Turner and Douglas' views are accepted, then it must be the case that the pernicious influences of racism can affect both the body and the mind. Instead of an interconnectedness between the mental and the physical that occurs when a body "belongs" to society, these poems show how the two have become distanced or alienated from each other because of externally imposed prejudicial beliefs.

12      This disjuncture between the physical and social self is also addressed in Kay's collection, The Adoption Papers, a text that is concerned with the underlying tensions inherent within genealogical connections and disconnections. It investigates these ideas in relation to blood, a bodily fluid which in terms of health can be life-sustaining, circulating food, oxygen and molecules of the immune system around the body, as well as potentially life threatening, conveying bacteria, cancer cells and poison. In terms of identity, blood is often thought of as that which distinguishes us from one another (Buckley and Gottlieb). It is this latter idea of blood being a potent indicator of identity that is explored in The Adoption Papers through the polyvocal narratives of three women: an "adoptive mother," a "birth mother," and a "daughter."

13      The interconnectedness of blood, health and identity is evidenced by the daughter's quest to gain information about her biological parents. She knows little more than that her mother is white and her father black, having been separated from them when a young baby. Attempting to learn of her ancestry, she asks "What Is In My Blood?" and "I want to know my blood" (Adoption 25, 29, emphasis and capitalisation in the original). The implication is, of course, that by knowing where her blood has come from (in terms of genealogy) she can understand herself better. Blood is therefore shown to have great importance in the daughter's quest to delimit the self. She sees it as a significant way of finding out about her familial (and, in this case, racial) identity. Alison Lumsden claims that the poems in this collection "assert the desire to locate oneself within the perceived certainties of a biological past - a desire reinforced by the photograph 'Human chromosomes' on the collection's cover" (80). It is notable in the context of this paper that the daughter is aware that, without an understanding of her genetic background, she cannot know her medical history. On visits to the doctor and dentist we are told they always ask her "the old blood questions about family runnings," to which she is forced to reply "I don't know what diseases / come down my line" (29).

14      Such ontological and teleological uncertainties that result from her mixed race status and lack of contact with her "real" parents are further complicated by the fact that her non-biological parents are white. This leads to an ambivalent attitude with regard to her desire to locate and define her biological identity, evidenced by a strong desire to "know" her blood, at the same time as wishing to reject the idea that blood connections are important. The denial of the significance of blood relationships is perhaps influenced by her adoptive mother's stance on the issue, for whom racial and familial "ambiguities" do not matter. She states:

Now when people say 'ah but
it's not like having your own child though is it',
I say of course it is, what else is it?
she's my child, I have told her stories
wept at her losses, laughed at her pleasures,
she is mine. (23)

Indeed, the adoptive mother believes there are other factors that can supersede familial bonds:

See me and her
there is no mother and daughter more similar.
We're on the wavelength so we are.
Right away I know if she's upset.
And vice versa. Closer than blood.
Thicker than water. Me and my daughter. (34)

Blood connections and racial lineage are thus shown to be unimportant in this particular relationship. For the adoptive mother, "all this umbilical knot business is nonsense" (23), an idea reflected in the literary form of the last two lines above. A rearrangement of the syntactical structure of the well-known axiom "blood is thicker than water" suggests that an emotional and psychic alliance that "is closer than blood" can override the complex nexus of familial and biological bonds.

15      Unfortunately the daughter cannot entirely abandon the quest to "know" her blood, despite her adoptive mother's willingness to disregard differences. This could be due to the fact that other people will not let her forget her racial identity and who: "keep trying to make it matter, / the blood, the tie, the passing down / generations" (29). This constant reminder of her ambiguous identity is suggestive of an implicit form of racism that concerns notions of blood purity. Although there is no scientific evidence to prove that there is any difference between the blood of one race or another, the "one-drop rule" has had (and arguably still has) currency. This quantitative metaphor of blood is present in a racist ideology which advocates the belief that miscegenation will infect and contaminate "pure" white blood. The prohibition of blood-mixing in the Indian caste system, where those who have the lowest blood status are thought to be "untouchable" due to their "unclean" blood, also reflects this fear.