Nanny, Ma and me: An Irish story of family, race and home

This story is a multi-generational memoir that explores the experiences of one family of color in Ireland today, revealing the challenges and complexities of race and identity. It is based on the author's personal experiences and those of her nanny and mother.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 400 pages
Publication date: 16 June 2022
Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

This story is the culmination of extensive research into the lives of my nanny and my mother. I hope it provides insight into the experiences of one family of color in Ireland today. Most importantly, I want to initiate a conversation because when people come together to talk, the possibilities are endless.

Jade Jordan

Jade Jordan's grandmother, Kathleen, left Ireland for England in the late 1950s to train as a nurse. While there, she fell in love and married a Jamaican man. They had two sons and a daughter, Dominique, and settled in London's diverse Walthamstow. However, when Kathleen decided to return home to Dublin, she discovered that the color of her children's skin set them apart, and that their new lives would be very different from the ones they had known.

Here, in this honest, warm-hearted, and often humorous multi-generational memoir, Kathleen, Dominique, and her daughter Jade each tell their story. From Kathleen's determination to raise her children with love and security in inner-city Dublin, to Dominique's struggle to figure out how she fit in as a young Black teenager, to Jade's own experiences as a Black woman growing up in twenty-first-century Ireland, Nanny, Ma & Me is a story about race in a country of contradictions. At its heart lies a tale of the power of community, love, and three women for whom family is everything.

Weight: 280g
Dimension: 129 x 197 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781529365023