The depiction of marginality according to JACKIE KAY: a postcolonial reading of the adoption

paper
 Multicultural literature includes literature about people who are considered outside of the
mainstream of society and have been insome manner marginalized and include people from
diverse cultural backgrounds. This includes a description of a british author Jackie Kay. Known
as a novelist, poet and dramatist , she is a Scottish writer whose mostly influenced on with
issue of marginality such as identity. Thus, she started marking her age by the publication of her
first work, wish was a sequence of poem entitled the adoption paper (1991) follow by the novel
trumpet, red dust roed , and why you don't stop talking ? . Most of the themes emphasized in
her work was based on reality, imagination, identity,racism . A regard checking on this work ,
show that it's through identity and fluidity that world marginalise and minimise others . She
view identity as a fluid flux that does not take a fixed form . That is where she introdce some
passage of her personnal life in most of her writing Wich make it autobiographical. Her work
the adoption paper depict from her personnal story. She was adopted and growth up in a family
and she later discovered that she have different origin. Born from a white woman but a black
father. By commenting on marginality, she denounce the minimization, the underestimation of
people by regarding their identity, race and class in society , due to gender discrimination.

Marginalisation is the oppression of a class on another in order to make them feeling useless ,
it's base on variation of race and the voice of other. Kay's interest on marginality , show the way
how she herself has been oppressed by society because of her identity . Jackie kay the adoption
paper, presente a sort of marginalisation through the adoption paper as an alienation and
hypothetical rejection of a certains race in the western society due to their nature or different
biological root. The daughter describe and state in this collection of poem , reviews from the
cultural Kay, charting her development as a black Scottish committed to the interrogation of
identity categories Wich led her attentes a colonialism from the postcolonial view.
Postcolonialism in culture can be view as a focuses particularly on the way in which literature
by the colonizing culture distorts the experience and realities, and inscribes the inferiority, of
the colonized people on literature by colonized peoples which attempts to articulate their
identity and reclaim their past in the face of that past's inevitable otherness. With Bhabha, or
the theoretician par excellence of postcolonialism

cultural, we arrive on the scene of an avant-garde and post-structuralist theorization of

colonial, minority and postcolonial literatures and cultures. Unlike some earlier perspectives on
postcoloniality, Bhabha's discussion of culture in Postcolonial Criticism, forgoes easy
antagonism of races, classes, and nations in favor of a "hybrid place of cultural value". "the
postcolonial perspective resists the attempt at holistic forms of social explanation. It compels
recognition of the more complex cultural and political boundaries that exist at the edge of
these often opposing political spheres" Despite such recognition of a complex dynamic of
postcolonial cultural politics, and a related attempt to formulate a postcolonial critique of
concepts of hybridity, ambivalence, and interstitiality, Bhabha's perspective cannot avoid
assuming a radical political distinction between "survival cultures", on the one hand we have
the colonial and national cultures, on the other hand; between marginal positions of subject
and positions of authority and power; and between a hybrid articulation of cultural value and
other articulations that are, or claim to be, monological. Although neither of these enunciative
positions is inherently consistent or stable, his theory nevertheless subscribes to a dualistic
scheme that suggests that diaspora cultures are radically different from nonliminal cultures and
positions. Such a constitutive distinction between two sets of cultural phenomena allows
Bhabha to claim a revisionist and complementary role for Postcolonial culture. It has the power
to contest and destabilize the structures of hegemonic authority by “altering” the discourses in
which metropolitan authority is expressed. Among these strategies of otherness, hybridity has
come to the fore to such an extent that in some accounts it is treated as the sine qua non of the
politics of postcolonial cultural theory. Thus he puts Bhabha thus puts in place postcolonial
relations, and minoritycultures as a counter-discourse to the discourse of colonizing modernity.
Applying this theory to the concept of marginality describe by Jackie Kay especially in her
adoption paper, will led us to analyze involves us to analyze the way therefore it is rejected in
its host society even this is the case in its foster home; what she demonstrated in the adoption
paper which is none other than autobiographical. this theory will show the desire for authority
and colonization and the disgust that white culture has towards Africans.

Key word : postcolonialism, marginality, hybridity, fluid identity, flux identity

In a society, when a group of people are minimized or underestimate, they are reduced to
marginalisation. It is a term first introduced by robert park in his work : migration and marginal
man (1928) he defines it as a a result of a barrier imposed between the individual immigrants
as a prejudice to be accepted in the dominant culture. He argue that , marginality occurs when
individuals from migrant groups are prejudiced against being fully accepted into a dominant
culture . In this way, the marginaliser people, having adopted mimicry of the dominant culture,
( they changes their mind, perception and behavior to be accepted) are unable to return
unchanged to their original group. Thus, they are caught in a structure of double ambivalence ,
unable neither to leave nor to dismember the group. Marginal people generally react to this
field pressure in several directions , as return, assimilation , balance and transcendence.

This term of marginality mostly depict from the social exclusion when certain people get
denied access to areas of society due to their identity , ethnicity or sexual orientation. This
occur from discrimination bias as poverty and structural disavantages. The term is concieder as
the most dangerous form of oppression . Marginalization is often described as a social process
where people are pushed to the margins of society. It is defined as a process in which
individual or communities are socially excluded, systematically blocked or denied access to
participate in social and political processes that are fundamental to conforming to the
standards of the society in which they find themselves. Marginalization prevents a person,
group, section or community from enjoy the rights, privileges, opportunities and resources that
are normally available to members of a society. It can therefore be considered as a discordant
relationship between those who marginalize versus those who are marginalized. In this way,
the term "marginalized" can be used as a synonym for the term: "oppressed" versus an
"oppressor" according to Paolo Freire used in his work Pedagogy of the oppressed, also as the
word "proletariat" in the sense of Karl Marx, "subaltern" used by Gramsci, "powerless" as
Michel Foucault elaborates ;they are exploited, seing vulnerable, discriminated against society,
disadvantaged, subjugated, socially excluded, alienated or oppressed as used elsewhere in the
available work in literature.

Marginality appear in culture when there's not equal equal accès to resources because the
goods are looking for someone's identity.

The expectation of marginality through different dimension is done on the previous line. It's
seen that it is a term introduced by Robert Park and coined by some others author. Jackie kay
then is known as an author of the marginal voice; let's explore now how and why she dicieded
to write about marginality.

Adopted and elected by a white family, but born from a white mother and a black father, the
multiculturalist author jackie kay is a Scottish writer affected personnaly by social
marginalisation. Seen that she was adopted, the minority people wasn't care of what she have
to say because they where busy to look at her face ( in other to exclud her from society because
of her identity) before knowing his true origins, the writer was very eventful. she refuted the
idea of living in apartheid and used her imagination to create some great things. By this way,
she started connoting on poetry and was encouraged by her teachers, which allowed and
motivated her to have confidence in herself and move forward. This is why the majority of her
works such as: the adoption paper, trumpet, why don't you stop talking, red dust road are
autobiographically represente; it's in this lence that she once declared: "all writers rely on their
own experience, and much of my experience has been reinforced in my writings."According to
Ramey and Arana, Jackie Kay's poetry is based on the capacity of human beings to create and
transform.

Kay's life wasn't really simple at the beginning. Despite the fact that, she was also the member
of the minority , she was also marginalised because of her origin. No matter wish great thing
she used to do, people where busy just to look at her face because because she had the marks
of origin of her black father. Now, let's expect that marginality in her different work.
The adoption paper is a a collection of poem by jackie kay. It is concieder as a narrative poem
for three voices, tells the story of an adoption from the points of view of the birth mother, the
adoptive mother, and the adopted child, and tell the brief story of Jackie kay .Having African
roots and being adopted by a white Scottish family ."The Adoption Papers" is a three-part
poem.

The first part is divided into five chapters; retraces the period of birth and adoption from the
point of view of the biological mother, the adoptive mother and the daughter: the three voices
are distinguished by different fonts. The voices of the biological and adoptive mothers follow
one another, the natural mother speaks of the ease with which she conceived the child, the
adoptive mother of her desire to be pregnant and to endure the discomforts and pains of
pregnancy. The poem reveals that the child is mixed race, (born of a white Scottish mother, a
black Nigerian father) and illegitimate and therefore doubly stigmatized with regard to the
moral climate.

Jackie kay through adoption paper, raises the issue of women's painful position in society and
the construction of space for themselves as marginal subjects within this triad, questioning the
dichotomy between femininity and motherhood , as well as the multicultural self-
representation of the black girl. The logical analysis aims to interrogate the complex formation
of hybridity and fluidity of identity from racial, gender and autobiographical perspectives that
are reflected through three different voices of the white biological mother, the white adoptive
mother and black adoptive daughter.

According to a regard on it's ambiguous category, the collection of poems, denounces a part on
the ethnic aspect of Kay's poetry. In this collection of poem, she uses three speakers such as
the biological mother, the adoptive mother and the adopted child and examines how their
identity is being formed. Kay understands identity as constant and flexible change. DavidPaddy
explains it in terms of a process: he says that In Kay's poems, identity is seen as a process of
choices the characters make about themselves, usually in reaction to the ideas and perceptions
of others." According to Kay, identity is not given to the child at birth but is acquired through
interaction with the child's environment. As she says in her poem the revealing part "The whole
thing about umbilical knots is a nonsense" (Kay, line 65). The act of adoption is not the primary
focus, but it serves as a means of metaphorical self-discovery. In The Adoption Papers, Kay is
also sensitive to cultural elements and racial in this throw, she uses a personification in the
poem "black bottom": My skin is burning like coal like that time she said Darkies are like coal in
front of the whole class, my bloodWhat does she mean? (Kay, lines 57-60) Those origin from
her leads her to use elements of her real life to create a sequence of poems that fictionalizes
different manifestations of identity and shows their interaction and seeming contradictions at
the same time. Kay first sees identity as a fluid flow that does not take a fixed form and that
moves away from any preconceived idea because it is a continuous and changing formation.

. In an interview in POETRY archives, she concedes the fact that identity is a process on which
she is condemned for life and is more interested in its fluidity and how it cannot be frozen
because according to her conception, no one can to possess an identity forever, of its
existence. Andrew robinson argues that the human complex is made up of a fluid identity,
which helps his self-recognition, and supports Kay's idea in his perception that no one can keep
the same identity forever. he often embraces certain new circumstances which somehow
change his native identity. what is called social or cultural identity where comes the concept of
fluid identity. The structuralist theory considers fluidity as an abstraction, and denies its
subjective meaning although it is embodied in the human being.

In the poem "Black Bottom", Kay explores the dangers that threaten the ethnic identity of the
daughter adopted in a society biased against ethnic minorities. The case of her classmates
calling her "Sambo Sambo" is exposed (pages 24), and she cannot accept. Her displeasure with
such racist names lays bare her violent urges and she kicks her mate's guts. But as soon as she
lets go, he calls her "Dirty Darkie" (page, 24) which shows that despite the violence exposed to
her, her desire to marginalize and reject her is stronger. Right after , this collective racism
manifests in the reaction of their teacher who blames her alone, warning her that "in a few
years you will be a juvenile delinquent", and calling her by names such as "thug", "vandal", and
"thug" (page , 25). The whole atmosphere at school smacks of ethnic derision. This continues
when with her school mates, practice for the school show trying to do the "Cha Cha and Black
Bottom" dances, the girl can't "do the right steps", a situation in which any student could find
themselves. But the teacher rather carries her reproaches to ethnic grounds. We find in the
poem:

my teacher shouts from the bottom

of the class Come on, show

us what you can do I thought

you people had it in your blood.

My skin is hot as burning coal

like that time she said Darkies are like coal

in front of the whole class my blood

what does she mean? I thought (page 25)

 Stereotypical racist views of the adopted girl and her ethical roots are rife in the school
atmosphere. This qualification of the teacher in this kind of stereotypical categorization that
considers all black people to be very good in these dances admits of no exceptions as if it were
an indisputable truth. Although the girl cannot perform these dances, the teacher does not
question her own clichés about the "Darkies", or else just conceive as children. Instead of
recognizing an exception that should make her doubt the universality of her conceptions, the
teacher wants to perpetuate them by forcing the girl to conform to them. This racial
confrontation pushes the girl to engage in a reflective process that challenges many static
concepts related to identity and society. His interaction with the school community leads him
to question the bases of the construction of his ethnic identity in such a community. This
questioning deconstructs the stereotyped image and explores other possibilities. The girl's
inability to perform a dance that most Africans are accustomed to dancing attests according to
Schrage-Früh to the fact that the girl's black identity is not a given or inherited fact and removes
any notion essentialist black identity. If the identity was essentialist, the girl would have
danced this dance naturally. It implies that identity is a process in which the person is
continuously involved or a skill that can be acquired at any time therefore the concept of
identity is a design that is continuously developing which has makes it fluid and checks the
design of Kay who says: "no human being can keep a single identity".

The community in which the adopted girl lives assumes a superficial and stereotypical identity
fixed for her and treats her accordingly to this difference. However, her exclusion from those
"we" conceived in her presence as group images trying to push her away from there , is by no
means a disappointment for her, contrary, it only drives her to search for her blood, an ethnic
to which she belongs and which she will also call hers. This quest has her searching for other
characters who belong to her ethnicity , she therefore identifies with the black American
political activist Angela Davis. we perceive in the poem where she refers:

Angela Davis is the only female person

I've seen (except for a nurse on TV)

who looks like me. She had big hair like mine

that grows out instead of down.

My mum says it's called an Afro.

If I could be as brave as her when I get older

I'll be OK.

Last night I kissed her goodnight again

 and wondered if she could feel the kisses

in prison all the way from Scotland.

Her skin is the same too you know.

I can see my skin is that colour

I worry she's going to get the chair.

I worry she's worrying about the chair.

My dad says she'll be putting on a brave face.

He bought me a badge home which I wore

to school. It says FREE ANGELA DAVIS.

And all my pals says 'Who's she?' (p 27)

Both the adopted girl and her new friend Angela Davis have the same marks and same view in
society that to be relayed from society by racists just because of their skin linked to their origin.
The adopted daughter considers the similarity of her color and her hair with those of Angela
Davis as an essential identity mark . The only conception that she is not the only one to have
such physical characteristics make her so proud and give her motivation . Both them sharing
those specifics characteristics highlight a sense of belonging to an ethnic group; , she bold
energy and feeds on hope and wishes to reach the bravery of Angela Davis in the fight against
racism and the defense of the rights of Afros. This is how she is concerned about her destiny
and uses the slogan "FREE ANGELA DAVIS". This slogan also has a symbolic or indirect
purpose ;It expresses the girl's desire to fight racism in her own community. The girl's
identification with this black activist is more than a simple identification with someone who has
the same ethnic roots but above all a means of combating racism at school where ignorance of
this activist ,highlights the mystifying educational device, that darkens any ideologically
opposed existence in which she is confronted. The adoptive family is very supportive of her
search because although they are white, they do not share their community's inherent racism
against ethnic minorities. This supportive family environment encourages the girl to stay true to
her political identity. The struggle with the public problem may be due to their different
political orientations; Davis and the girl are seen as communists who fight for social equality,
human rights, and world peace. As she searches for her ethnic roots, she finds self-fulfillment
within an adoptive white family from which, according to Lumsden, she recognizes “the tension
between essential and constructed identity models”. This tension is not a conflict, it is rather
symbiotic in nature where the two models coexist and do not oppose (she as black and her
family as white). Moreover, both her political identity and her ethnic identity,cannot be
separated because this identity is supported by the political affiliations of her parents.

In The Poem "Generations" the girl's adult life is unraveled, this part brings back her fluid
conceptions of her biological past. She finds herself having to conceptualize this past through
her mirror image:

I don’t know what diseases

come down my line;

when dentists and doctors ask

the old blood questions about family runnings

I tell them: I have no nose or mouth or eyes

to match, no spitting image or dead cert,

my face watches itself in the glass" (page 29).

We see in this passage that she don't really know her personnal Roots, this lack of knowledge
make her feels uncomfortable and push her learning more about that biological identity , an
ignorance that tortures her and pushes her to acquire the slightest knowledge of these roots,
whatever their subjectivity. Following to Kay's perception, every human in search of ethnic
identity must remember the roots in their effort to find their ancestry.

When she mentions the reference to "diseases" it implies that white doctors and dentists
believe that her color relates with diseases and that her "blood" is not pure or clean. Seen that,
she then wonders about the almost great importance that people pay to blood and biological
difference with her adoption. she say :

I have my parents who are not of the same tree

and you keep trying to make it matter,

the blood, the tie, the passing down

generations.

We all have our contradictions,

the ones with the mother's nose and father's eyes

 have them;

the blood does not bind confusion,

yet I confess to my contradiction

I want to know my blood. (P 29)

She finds in her adoptive parents a real consideration and a sigh different from what she finds
in society. Its reference to "tree", the pronoun "you" and in light of the "contradiction"
mentioned later in the excerpt, imply that the girl is dramatizing two internal side ; in one
side , recognizing that parenthood is not just about blood; biology in no way decides on the
meaning of family and social identity; and the other side feeling the need to know his biological
parents.

However, these contradictions are not seen as negative but highlight the symbiotic nature of
the different aspects of identity. This attempt to find roots is only an act of contemplation that
indulges in the symbolic importance of these roots. she pronounces:

It is the well, the womb, the fucking seed.

Here, I am far enough away to wonder

what were their faces like

who were my grandmothers

what were the days like

passed in Scotland

the land I come from

the soil in my blood. (P 29)

The girl expresses her thirst for information about her birth parents in order to know the roots
of the lineage. She realizes that the family plays a role in the construction of her identity
represented in "the land in my blood". But this is not its only role, because there is another role
played by "the land where I come from". Soil and earth involve roots, a fact which suggests
that the identity construction is as important as biological construction. She can only
speculate on "the well, the womb, the fucking seed". All of these things are potential roots that
she knows nothing about. She feels that biology is part of her identity and she searches for her
biological roots simply because she wants to gain knowledge about the different manifestations
of her identity. The well represents Africa in general, the belly for the mother and the seed for
the father. These three things mix biology and ethnicity things that belong to an unknown past
that the girl tries to trace. This act of reconstruction shows that many aspects of identity
formation are only temporary and do not take a fixed form because the imagination plays a
major role in this reconstruction. Taylor in The Country at my Shoulder”: Gender and Belonging
in Three Contemporary Women Poets. then mentions the fact that "While Kay recognizes in her
writings the fictional nature of our identities, she is also aware of the need for these fictions to
give us a sense of ontological security" Then, the girl tries to understand this "land" (her
mother) trying to visualize a never-before-seen character but it quickly fails because she
doesn't have specific details

She is faceless

She has no nose

She is five foot eight inches tall

She likes hockey best

She was a waitress

She wears no particular dress

She is faceless, she never weeps.

She has neither eyes nor

fine boned cheeks (p 30)

The girls described in the adoption paper face multiple facets of marginality through their
background and identity. Although the adopted girl looking for her biological mother, realizes
at some point that if she stole her childhood, she stole her right to have baby teeth, hence she
is then perceived as unfavorable and a woman who is able to tt to deny its originality and its
responsibility with a child. What showcase her is the fact that some people from the white
community where she lives, tries to destabilize this self-image, confronting her with the fact
that her mother had "no choice" to adopt her. Although this shocks her, she internalizes it and
turns to her mother for support and clarification, from where she unfortunately receives her
mother's revelation that she is not her real mother. She begins to accept the separation
between biological nature and nurturing and socializing relation .

Despite this separation, they neither denied nor cancel each other out. This is underscored by
her insistence on loving her mother "whether she's real or not". To MacDonald in Critical
Identities: Rethinking Feminism through Transgender Politics. To explain then in the same pitch
that "It is in the capacity of identity to indicate in itself spaces of liminality and difference which
presents new challenges to the previous theoretical paradigms of the formation of the
identity.” These new challenges are represented here in the “adoption” of her mother. That is
to say, the fact that her mother is only adoptive, not real, makes her verify her previous
identity. This act of verification results in her accepting the non-linear relationship between her
and her adoptive mother. This also leads her to reformulate her conception of social identity.
As the context in which the girl's search or conscious exploration of identity constantly changes,
her formulation of her identity can never be a finished product; it can be seen as an ongoing
process. The difference in color between the daughter and the adoptive mother does not
frighten the former in reference to her family identity which she sees in a new light, but pushes
her to resume her search for biological roots. Her recognition of this difference and this
separation allows her to feel a lot of gratitude towards her adoptive mother who guaranteed
her survival, hence the epithet "the best".

In a few lines of the poem, it is clearly seen how she was the most pampered daughter of her
family, she correctly specifies how she was the muse and the favorite in the family; she talk
about the way how she's admirable and respect in her family instead she's not one of them
( adopted ), don't share the same identity nor roots and so doing, present her personnal
identity through the mirror of society. We can find in the text:

Ma mammy bot me oot a shop

Ma mammy says I was a luvly baby

Ma mammy picked me (I wiz the best)

your mammy had to take you (she'd no choice) Ma mammy

says she's no really ma mammy

(just kid on)

………………………

She says my real mammy is away

far away Mammy why aren't you and me the same colour

But I love my mammy whether she's real or no

……………………

She took me when I'd nowhere to go

my mammy is the best mammy in the world OK. (P 21)

Instead of being treated so into the adoptive family, she still had the need to find a biological
roots because no matter how she's well encourage, she still have . It is noticed that the adopted
daughter is talking about the way how she has been adopted without using the word adopted ''
ma mammy bought me oot a shop '' '' ma mammy picked me up '' and also regretting the way
how she has been abandoned by the biological mother. At that moment , the sort of
imagination , physical wound and heart broken is feels for the adoptive mother .

Reached the end , Through the imaginative autobiographical journey of the girl in the poetic
sequence of "The Adoption Papers", Jackie Kay adopts a flexible view of identity that neither
essentializes nor fixes it. It welcomes different manifestations of identity which are not
mutually exclusive. She recognizes that her multiple identities are interconnected or linked
together, where the fictional cannot be separated from the real or the factual. In the work
done, it emerges that the writer focuses on the ethnic aspect and uses three main speakers the
biological mother, the adoptive mother and the adopted child to examine the formation of
their identity and how one other causes an impact on the identity of the other. Kay
understands identity as constant and flexible change, where David Paddy sees it as a process of
choices that characters make about themselves, usually in reaction to the ideas and
perceptions of others." According to Kay, identity is not given to the child at birth but is
acquired through interaction with the child's environment which makes it fluid; no one can
have more than one identity more precisely. The difference of race and identity makes the
young girl undergo during her trip a certain degree of marginality in her society, especially in
her school where she is forced to undergo the distinctions of her melanin race. kay then shows
that this marginality does not in any way warm her heart because she herself has these germs
but nevertheless pushes her to seek her nature and her true biology

WORK CITED

Arana, and Ramey, (2004). Black British Writing. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Kay, Jackie (1991). The Adoption Papers . Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books

An interview with Jackie Kay", Poetry Archive (2005).

MacDonald, E. (1998). Critical Identities: Rethinking Feminism through Transgender Politics.
Atlantis.

Taylor, J. (2001). “The Country at my Shoulder”: Gender and Belonging in Three Contemporary
Women Poets.

park Robert (1928) Human migration and marginal man'', American Journal of Sociology,

Freire, Paulo (1972), Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin