The Sunday Read: ‘The Kidnapped Child Who Became a Poet’
The Daily24 Sep 2023

The Sunday Read: ‘The Kidnapped Child Who Became a Poet’

“The weird thing about growing up kidnapped,” Shane McCrae, the 47-year-old American poet, told me in his melodious, reedy voice one rainy afternoon in May, “is if it happens early enough, there’s a way in which you kind of don’t know.”

There was no reason for McCrae to have known. What unfolded in McCrae’s childhood — between a day in June 1979 when his white grandmother took him from his Black father and disappeared, and another day, 13 years later, when McCrae opened a phone book in Salem, Ore., found a name he hoped was his father’s and placed a call — is both an unambiguous story of abduction and a convoluted story of complicity. It loops through the American landscape, from Oregon to Texas to California to Oregon again, and, even now, wends through the vaster emotional country of a child and his parents. And because so much of what happened to McCrae happened in homes where he was beaten and lied to and threatened, where he was made to understand that Black people were inferior to whites, where he was taught to hail Hitler, where he was told that his dark skin meant he tanned easily but, no, not that he was Black, it’s a story that’s been hard for McCrae to piece together.

McCrae’s new book, the memoir “Pulling the Chariot of the Sun,” is his attempt to construct, at a remove of four decades, an understanding of what happened and what it has come to mean. The memoir takes the reader through McCrae’s childhood, from his earliest memories after being taken from his father to when, at 16, he found him again.

his story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

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Episoder(2690)

Monday, Feb. 13, 2017

Monday, Feb. 13, 2017

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13 Feb 201720min

Friday, Feb. 10, 2017

Friday, Feb. 10, 2017

Is President Trump’s travel ban headed to the Supreme Court? Did the boy in the photograph make it to America? Plus: your stories about living through history. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

10 Feb 201720min

Thursday, Feb. 9. 2017

Thursday, Feb. 9. 2017

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9 Feb 201718min

Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2017

Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2017

The travel ban litigation, live-streamed. And why the 60-year-old words of the novelist James Baldwin captured in the film “I Am Not Your Negro” are so resonant right now. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

8 Feb 201720min

Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017

Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017

Why the nomination of Betsy DeVos for secretary of education is President Trump’s most controversial appointment in an already controversial cabinet. Plus: the meaning of four hardback chairs in the Oval Office. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

7 Feb 201719min

Monday, Feb. 6, 2017

Monday, Feb. 6, 2017

What single figure connects the 2008 financial crisis, the creation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the Tea Party movement, Donald J. Trump’s election and, now, the potential dismantling of the biggest safeguard against America’s economic ruin? His name is Gary D. Cohn. Also, a Times investigation goes inside the world of the Islamic State and finds that terrorists no longer have to cross borders to carry out their attacks. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

6 Feb 201719min

Friday, Feb. 3, 2017

Friday, Feb. 3, 2017

The biggest story in sports meets the biggest story in politics. And a bloody mission in Yemen reminds us that a new administration doesn’t always mean a new start. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

3 Feb 201716min

Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017

Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017

Who is influencing our new president’s views of Islam and radical Islamic terrorism? Are we seeing the beginning of a Tea Party for the Left? And why are its leaders looking to Republicans for inspiration? More on that — plus Beyoncé — on today’s show. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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