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 for him was 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. His grandmother taught him the Nazi salute, told him that he 鈥渢anned very easily鈥� and that he was living with her 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 father Stanley.
Shane's latest collections of poetry are called Sometimes I Never Suffered and The Gilded Auction Block.
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Presenter: Emily Webb
Producer: Maryam Maruf
Picture: Shane McCrae as a child
Credit: Courtesy Shane McCrae
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