A poet pieces together an uncertain past in 'Memoir of a Kidnapping'

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/09/ [login to see] /shane-mccrae-pulling-the-chariot-of-the-sun
Poet and author Shane McCrae says he was almost 4 years old when he was kidnapped from his Black father in Oregon by his maternal grandparents, who were white supremacists.

"They took me to Round Rock, Texas, which is a suburb of Austin," McCrae says. "And they told my mother that if she ever tried to get custody of me — and, I also think, if she ever tried to tell my father where I was — that she would never see me again, they would disappear to Mexico."

McCrae remembers his grandparents taught him to "heil" Hitler, and told him that Black people were inferior to white people. They claimed that his dad had moved on and had started a new family in Brazil — stories designed to keep McCrae from asking too many questions about his background.