The black child raised by white supremacists
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 鈥渢anned very easily鈥� and that he was living with them because his black father didn鈥檛 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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