A MOTHER APART

Directed by Laurie Townshend

2024

88 min

 

Review by Evelyn C. White

 

 

 

Readers familiar with the novel Annie John (1985) by Jamaica Kincaid or the film Black Mother Black Daughter (1989) by Nova Scotia artist and writer Sylvia Hamilton will discover similar themes in A Mother Apart (2024).

 

The documentary is a debut feature from Toronto-based filmmaker Laurie Townshend about acclaimed queer poet/activist Staceyann Chin. All of the works explore, to powerful effect, the personal and societal issues that can both burden and burnish the bonds between women of African descent and their mothers.

 

Born in Jamaica to Hazel, a Jamaican woman who fled solo to Montreal for “a better life” when her child and future poet was just nine, Chin, now 52, struggles to make peace with the fury and affection she feels for her mom who left her.

 

 

 

 

In a deft narrative approach, Townshend sets Chin’s search (literally and figuratively) for her mother in Canada, the U.S., Germany, and Jamaica against a backdrop of the poet’s loving relationship with her daughter Zuri, who appears at age nine throughout the film. 

 

 “My Jamaica has always been the hardest poem to write,” Chin declares in the documentary, adding that the harms she suffered during her youth could not be assuaged by the care she received from her devoted maternal grandmother. Indeed, viewers feel viscerally  Chin’s sense of loss and betrayal when she reveals that she was beaten by an aunt after she stabbed a predatory cousin with a sharpened pencil.

 

With the arch humour that infuses release, Chin then announces that she moved from Jamaica to New York to “pursue the career of lesbianism.” The film also features riveting clips of the self-described “writer, mother, and dissenter” as she performs at various spoken word events. “What happened to me was not my fault,” she effectively screams at a gathering, as the audience cheers.

 

 

 

 

A series of “living room protests” that Chin recorded with Zuri are depicted to underscore the importance of the poet’s message: “Is it ok for anyone to touch you without your permission?” Chin asks her child. “No,” Zuri immediately responds. The silence and secrecy that shroud Hazel’s life stand in stark contrast to the openness and honesty of Chin’s relationship with Zuri. 

 

Despite her determined efforts in four countries, Chin never finds out why her mother, with whom she’d had periodic contact, abandoned her. “No one will ever say a bad word about her,” Chin laments to a married couple in Montreal and Hazel’s former neighbours. The neighbours had met Hazel’s other child, a daughter born in Montreal, but apparently didn’t know that Chin existed until she showed up at their door. It’s another surprise twist in a film that brandishes several. 

 

 

 

 

Chin travels to Cologne, Germany where her mother and half-sister (with whom Chin had developed a close, long-distance relationship) live. Emotionally vacant and seemingly in poor health, Hazel does not engage, on-camera at least, in meaningful conversation with her daughters. However, in a solo interview with (presumably) the director, Hazel expresses remorse for her failings as a mother. 

 

Undaunted, Chin makes her way to the enclave in Jamaica where Hazel grew up. From there, she phones her mom in Germany and hands the device to one of Hazel’s cherished childhood friends. At the sound of the woman’s voice, Hazel begins to sob. 

 

All praises to Chin and Townshend for a film in which the possibility of healing triumphs over hurt. The overriding message? There is a balm to make the wounded whole.

 

 

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