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Outlook: The black child raised by white supremacists

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Shane as a child with his grandmother

28/09/2023 GMT

The black child raised by white supremacists

BBC World Service - Outlook, The black child raised by white supremacists

How Shane McCrae took to poetry to make sense of his difficult and abusive upbringing

African-American writer Shane McCrae grew up with his racist white grandparents. Poetry became a salvation and helped him make sense of his difficult and abusive upbringing.

Shane McCrae is an award-winning African-American poet and writer whose work often addresses the black experience in the US. Poetry became a way of making sense of his difficult and abusive upbringing. As a child, Shane was raised by his white maternal grandparents in a deeply racist household. Now both dead, they taught him the Nazi salute, told him that he “tanned very easily” and that he was living with them because his black father didn’t want him. But when Shane was a teenager, he would learn the truth about the racial prejudice and deception that divided him from his dad Stanley.

This episode was first broadcast in October 2020. Since then Shane has written a memoir called Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping.

Presenter: Emily Webb
Producer: Maryam Maruf

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707

(Photo: Shane McCrae with his grandmother. Credit: Courtesy of Shane McCrae)

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