Liminality and Intimacy in Jackie Kay's Wish I Was Here

This chapter examines liminality and intimacy as significant interpretative frames through which to read Jackie Kay’s second short story collection Wish I Was Here (2006). Through my textual analysis of two short stories – ‘What is left behind’ and ‘Pruning’ – and my engagement with Lauren Berlant’s concept of ‘minor intimacies’ (2000: 5), I argue that Kay proposes a ‘minor’ understanding of intimacy through the ‘minor’ potential of the short story. I explore how Kay queers normative life stages through her focus on intimate everyday moments and climactic threshold events within the life of her protagonists. Her stories humanise the liminal experience of those undergoing a loss of intimacy within their everyday lives after the termination of the intimate relationships which structured their very understanding of reality. Kay places intimacy at the heart of her examination of lesbian relationships, recognising and valuing the under-represented intimate details of quotidian queer relationships and separations. Ultimately, this chapter argues that by reading liminality and intimacy in Kay’s selected stories, we better understand her concern with the instabilities of the everyday and how she reimagines and expands understandings of intimacy.