This is fresh air. I'm Tanya Mosley. When poet and author Shane McCray was three years old,

he was kidnapped, but it would take him most of his childhood to realize it.

McCray's new memoir, pulling the chariot of the sun, is an unflinching test of a child's

memory. How he came to understand that his maternal grandparents who were white supremacists,

kidnapped him from his father, who was black. McCray grew up being taught by his grandparents

that black people were inferior to white people. He was taught to hail Hitler, and he was told

that his black father did not want him. Shane McCray is an associate professor in the creative

writing MFA program at Columbia University. He is the author of 13 poetry collections,

including Mule, Blood, and the language of my chapter, and sometimes I never suffered.

McCray is currently poetry editor of the magazine image. Pulling the chariot of the sun,

a memoir of a kidnapping is McCray's first memoir. Shane McCray, welcome to fresh air.

Thank you for having me. You know, one of the first questions that came up for me, and I'm sure

many others, is why white supremacists with kidnapped a black child, even if that child is their

grandson? And right off the top within the first few pages, you give a theory. Can I have you read it?

They raised me, but I don't know what my kidnappers thought of me, except I know that it's

liked my blackness, and probably valued me less than they would have valued a white child.

But they wouldn't have kidnapped me if I had been white, or they might have. My grandmother might

have, but for a different reason, because they kidnapped me to get me away from blackness,

thereby making a place for blackness in their home. Why do you think your white grandparents

made a place for blackness in their home? Do you think, maybe do you think they thought you might

pass for white? I don't think they thought that I would pass for white exactly. You know, I was darker

than they were, and when I asked them why I was darker, they said, because I'd hand easily.

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