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.

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.

Episoder(2698)

Friday, Mar. 16, 2018

Friday, Mar. 16, 2018

Ida B. Wells was an investigative reporter who exposed the systematic lynching of black men in the South. Her work made her the most famous black woman in the country. But when she died in 1931, at the age of 68, The New York Times failed to write an obituary. Obituaries in The Times have been long dominated by white men. Now, the paper of record is trying to fix the record. Guests: Amisha Padnani, the digital editor on The Times’s obituaries desk and a leader of the Overlooked project; Caitlin Dickerson, a national reporter for The Times; Michelle Duster, a professor at Columbia College Chicago and a great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. 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.

16 Mar 201822min

Thursday, Mar. 15, 2018

Thursday, Mar. 15, 2018

Florida is a great state to be a gun owner. For years, it has been a laboratory of sorts for the National Rifle Association — it’s the state that invented the concealed-carry permit. Gun control proponents had started to resign themselves to the fact that they might never pass any laws. Then came Parkland.Guest: Patricia Mazzei, the Miami bureau chief for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. 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.

15 Mar 201824min

Wednesday, Mar. 14, 2018

Wednesday, Mar. 14, 2018

Rex Tillerson’s relationship with President Trump was rocky from the start. But no one was more surprised than Mr. Tillerson when he was fired as secretary of state on Tuesday. Mr. Tillerson was the most persistent advocate of opening diplomatic channels with North Korea, a position that put him publicly at odds with his boss. As Mr. Trump prepares to meet Kim Jong-un, the North’s leader, we talk to the man who came closest to a deal with Pyongyang about what the current administration can learn from previous attempts. Guests: Mark Landler, a White House correspondent for The New York Times; William Perry, a former secretary of defense and one of the few senior U.S. officials to have negotiated directly with the North Koreans. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. 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.

14 Mar 201822min

Tuesday, Mar. 13, 2018

Tuesday, Mar. 13, 2018

With the prominent opposition leader Leopoldo López under house arrest, Venezuela thought its loudest political prisoner had finally been silenced. But he refused to buckle, even facing the prospect of going back to prison. Here’s the second part of Mr. López’s story. Guest: Wil S. Hylton, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. 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.

13 Mar 201826min

Monday, Mar. 12, 2018

Monday, Mar. 12, 2018

With Venezuela in crisis, its most vocal opposition leader, Leopoldo López, is under house arrest, unable to act. What happens if he does? Guest: Wil S. Hylton, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. 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.

12 Mar 201828min

Friday, Mar. 9, 2018

Friday, Mar. 9, 2018

Hush money. Catch-and-kill deals. The threat of blackmail. An elaborate system has developed to silence women who level accusations against powerful men. One of those women is Stephanie Clifford, a pornographic actress who claims to have had an affair with Donald J. Trump. Guest: Jim Rutenberg, The New York Times’s media columnist. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. 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.

9 Mar 201822min

Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018

Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018

In announcing new protections on steel and aluminum imports, President Trump said he was acting in the interest of national security. But could the real threat be the tariffs themselves? Guest: Peter S. Goodman, an economics correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. 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 Mar 201826min

Wednesday, Mar. 7, 2018

Wednesday, Mar. 7, 2018

South Korea says that the North is willing to talk about giving up its atomic arsenal. What happened to the threat of nuclear war? Guest: Mark Landler, a White House correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. 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 Mar 201820min

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