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In December of 2018, Chelene Knight won the 30th City of Vancouver Book Award for her second book, Dear Current Occupant (Book Thug $20), a memoir about living at twenty different addresses while growing up in Vancouver.
It takes the form of a series of letters addressed to current occupants as she peers through windows into remembered spaces, recalling aspects of growing up with her brother in a variety of neighborhoods, including the Downtown Eastside where her mother still lives.
“When I wrote Dear Current Occupant,” she recalled, “I went to the place that scared me the most. I found the one thing that punched me in the stomach and I wrote to that feeling, that memory, those wishes.”
She told co-nominee Travis Lupick for a Georgia Straight article: “There are so many stories of struggle and abuse and neglect. I think that a lot of young girls think, ‘Well, that’s my path. This is what I’ve seen, this is the way I grew up, and this is the only way to go.’ I’m showing folks that ‘Yes, this is kind of rough stuff, but…there is light at the end of the tunnel. You can go through all of these things and still be bloody amazing.’”
The other finalists were Travis Lupick (Fighting for Space), Erín Moure (Sitting Shiva on Minto Avenue, by Toots), and Rachel Rose (Sustenance: Writers From B.C. and Beyond on the Subject of Food).
The city's new general manager of arts, culture and community services, Sandra Singh, noted that Vancouver has a "deep and connected literary community...that brings forth rich and diverse voices. With the Book Award at its 30th year, we continue to champion creativity and connection through stories that encourage reflection in ourselves, our communities, and our shared city."
In 2018, Knight was the managing editor of the feminist journal Room and the programming director of the Growing Room festival.
Also a graduate of The Writer's Studio at SFU, Vancouver-born Knight released her first poetry collection, Braided Skin (Mother Tongue, 2015), largely emanating from experiences arising from her mixed ethnicity, poverty, urban upbringing and youthful dreams while growing up as a mixed East Indian/Black child and teen.
The title poem "Braided Skin" uses the analogy of braiding -- the concept of entwining -- to reflect racial tensions and ambiguities, always with the promise or threat of unravelling. Responding to the strands that comprise her life and her poetry, Wayde Compton, the African-Canadian director of SFU Writers Studio, noted Knight's poetry does "not let tribulation define the journey, though it's there," but instead there is a consistent quality of dance and laughter through the book. Knight has been published in Sassafras Literary Magazine, Room, emerge 2013 and Raven Chronicles.
She was featured on the cover of BC BookWorld when she published her first book in 2015.
BOOKS:
Let It Go: Free Yourself from Old Beliefs and Find a New Path to Joy (HarperCollins, 2024) $25.00 9781443466455
Junie (Book*hug Press, 2022) $23 978-1771667685
Dear Current Occupant (BookThug, 2018) $20
Braided Skin (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2015) $18.95 9781896949505
[BCBW 2023] "Afro-Canadian"
It takes the form of a series of letters addressed to current occupants as she peers through windows into remembered spaces, recalling aspects of growing up with her brother in a variety of neighborhoods, including the Downtown Eastside where her mother still lives.
“When I wrote Dear Current Occupant,” she recalled, “I went to the place that scared me the most. I found the one thing that punched me in the stomach and I wrote to that feeling, that memory, those wishes.”
She told co-nominee Travis Lupick for a Georgia Straight article: “There are so many stories of struggle and abuse and neglect. I think that a lot of young girls think, ‘Well, that’s my path. This is what I’ve seen, this is the way I grew up, and this is the only way to go.’ I’m showing folks that ‘Yes, this is kind of rough stuff, but…there is light at the end of the tunnel. You can go through all of these things and still be bloody amazing.’”
The other finalists were Travis Lupick (Fighting for Space), Erín Moure (Sitting Shiva on Minto Avenue, by Toots), and Rachel Rose (Sustenance: Writers From B.C. and Beyond on the Subject of Food).
The city's new general manager of arts, culture and community services, Sandra Singh, noted that Vancouver has a "deep and connected literary community...that brings forth rich and diverse voices. With the Book Award at its 30th year, we continue to champion creativity and connection through stories that encourage reflection in ourselves, our communities, and our shared city."
In 2018, Knight was the managing editor of the feminist journal Room and the programming director of the Growing Room festival.
Also a graduate of The Writer's Studio at SFU, Vancouver-born Knight released her first poetry collection, Braided Skin (Mother Tongue, 2015), largely emanating from experiences arising from her mixed ethnicity, poverty, urban upbringing and youthful dreams while growing up as a mixed East Indian/Black child and teen.
The title poem "Braided Skin" uses the analogy of braiding -- the concept of entwining -- to reflect racial tensions and ambiguities, always with the promise or threat of unravelling. Responding to the strands that comprise her life and her poetry, Wayde Compton, the African-Canadian director of SFU Writers Studio, noted Knight's poetry does "not let tribulation define the journey, though it's there," but instead there is a consistent quality of dance and laughter through the book. Knight has been published in Sassafras Literary Magazine, Room, emerge 2013 and Raven Chronicles.
She was featured on the cover of BC BookWorld when she published her first book in 2015.
BOOKS:
Let It Go: Free Yourself from Old Beliefs and Find a New Path to Joy (HarperCollins, 2024) $25.00 9781443466455
Junie (Book*hug Press, 2022) $23 978-1771667685
Dear Current Occupant (BookThug, 2018) $20
Braided Skin (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2015) $18.95 9781896949505
[BCBW 2023] "Afro-Canadian"
Articles: 1 Article for this author
Braided Skin (Mother Tongue $18.95
Article (2015)
Chelene Knight has been writing in secret since she was a child. "As a young mixed-race woman, I've always struggled with identity,"; she says. "I am still trying to find my voice.";
Having graduated from The Writer's Studio at SFU, the Vancouver-born poet has now released her first book, Braided Skin (Mother Tongue $18.95), largely emanating from experiences arising from her mixed ethnicity, poverty, urban upbringing and youthful dreams.
"Growing up with only my mother's side of the family [African American] and never being exposed to any of the cultural intricacies of my father's East Indian-Ugandan heritage, left a gaping hole in my chest I've never been able to fill.
"As a young parent, how do I hand over answers to probing questions of ethnicity, background, and history, when I myself didn't even have them? This is the question that the poems in Braided Skin finally answer.";
Knight's mother is African American. Her father and his family were victims of the Asian expulsion from Uganda that took place in the 1970s when President Idi Amin led a campaign of "de-Indianization,"; in essence a brutal ethnic cleansing of Uganda's Indian minority.
"So many Canadian mixed-race women struggle with finding a sense of belonging within themselves, as well as within their own families and even communities,"; she says. "I have spent a good chunk of my life feeling pressured to convince strangers of my ethnicity due to not physically fitting into any mold made by society's preconceived ideal.
"I think when you come from two different cultures, and are denied one half, you spend the majority of your time questioning everything in your life, from parenting to education, careers to social groups, and even dating and marriage.";
Knight's title poem 'Braided Skin' uses the analogy of braiding-the concept of entwining-to reflect racial tensions and ambiguities, always with the promise or threat of unravelling.
"In some pieces in the book, I use a character's voice as narrator, and even though a particular poem may not be about me, I'm always sure to remove my mask and question if this is where I'm supposed to be.";
Wayde Compton, director of The Writer's Studio, notes Knight's poetry does "not let tribulation define the journey, though it's there."; Instead there is a consistent quality of dance and laughter through the book.
A quote from Jeanette Winterson is prominent on Knight's website: "A tough life needs a tough language-and that is what poetry is. That's what literature offers-a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.";
A member of the editorial board of Room, Knight has been published in Sassafras Literary Magazine, Room, emerge 2013 and Raven Chronicles. She says, "The poems in this collection do address race directly and sometimes indirectly, but it's more than that. It's about realizing that I can have a variety of voices, and they are all indeed genuinely mine.
"I speak through music, erasure, story and rant. I don't have to pick a side. I wrote these poems for the women struggling with a sense of belonging, be it race-related or not. Everyone wants a place to feel content.
"... It's about the unmapped journey through city and then later, through self. Where one ends up is only the beginning.";
... Sing sweet.
These brown skin confessions.
Brown skin,
black skin,
caramel-dipped skin,
leathery-sunburnt skin,
ceases-to-remember skin,
like the war-torn-country skin,
she breathes-
skin.
- 'In the Green Room,' from Braided Skin
These days Chelene Knight stands strong in her chosen position as a hardworking single parent. Her work in progress, Dear Current Occupant, is a collection of prose poems and letters written in the voice of a young woman speaking to the horrors, sadness and pleasures that took place in the over 20 homes she lived in as a child.
978-1-896949-50-5
