Nanny, Ma and me

‘This story is the result of long hours of delving into the pasts of my nanny and my ma. I hope it will give some insight into the experiences of one family of colour in Ireland today. Most of all, I just want to start a conversation, because once 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. But when Kathleen decided to return home to Dublin, she discovered that the colour of her children’s skin set them apart – and that their new lives would be very different to 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.