father | Mixed Roots Stories

Can We Talk

Please check one of the following boxes:

Black

White

Asian

Indigenous

Métis

Other

In my younger days I remember filling out a job application and staring at that question about race for so long. Do I check the ‘Black” box? What the hell is “Other?” My hand hovered over the question for a long time …

The more I write about life as a mixed-race person, and what this means to me as a mother, woman, writer etc, the more the writing itself tends to be less about race and more about missing pieces, and figuring out the order of these pieces and how to put them together. And not only the pieces I’ve never had, but re-working and making do with the ones I do have.

My dad and I have never had a face to face conversation. We’ve written emails back and forth here and there over the course of 15 years. I’ve been struggling for a while now, stuck in the two parts of myself, wondering where I am supposed to fit. What stories are mine? What stories do I have the right to tell? I hold on tightly to fragments. I wonder if he knows the complexities of what I went through growing up. I wonder if he would have constructed a conversation with me as a young girl and given me advice on how to deal with questions about where I came from. I wonder how that conversation would have sounded.

From: Dad

To: Chelene

Sent: Sunday April 28, 2013 6:37 p.m.

Subject: Re: Uganda 1972: An Erasure Prose Poem draft

Oh my god, this is very good Chelene. How did you do this? It has some really good depth in how you constructed this. If anyone who reads both the articraft in your creation with the context of the true reality for those who were ousted as well as the dictatorship of what happened especially without changing the order of the words, tells a story almost in a biblical way.

From: Chelene

To: Dad

Sent: Sunday April 28, 2013 5:45 p.m.

Subject: Uganda 1972: An Erasure Prose Poem draft

Uganda—the pearl of Africa. The beauty of a peaceful sun setting could not erase our growing feeling that the flavour of a once promising land was evaporating. African kingdoms: The Bunyoro kingdom, the Buganda kingdom—it’s strength abolished and divided. The people were divided, shaken by the expulsion, the elimination—Amin’s brutal reign of terror. Carpenters, mechanics, shoemakers and tailors—the middlemen. The sting of a privileged position? Never. The political winds transformed into a choice. Minority eyes prevailed that day. Identify yourself; breakthrough for Uganda. The Asian presence of Kampala. His palace. His tombs were woven thatched roofs that swooped to a point high above the straw-laden floors below, lending a cathedral-like silence to the sacredness of the earth below where royal attendants continually watched over the remains of their dead kings. Kampala—the arched and pillared windows were endless. Nestled behind sundown, an Indian dialect of silks and cottons. Our eyes lettered names like “Patel” and “Desai” “Bombay Emporium.” The ashes of Uganda walked many miles and carried their heads. It was tedious work. It took years. The image was small, this image. It was the same image they left behind. Why should we wait in line for justice? Help us begin to drink the pain of Uganda. The mountains appeared at sunset. The hillsides of women flowed in the breeze. The men brought comfort but their eyes told accounts of death. In their minds, their birth. Like precious jewels in a hairdo or turban, we heard stories of escape. They looked back on the homes they built. They looked back on the tiny store their grandfather established. A mirror of minority alone in their difficult hours. Uprooted.

*

I considered the pieces. I re-ordered the pieces. Using ONLY the pieces I had, I created a conversation between my father and I:

*

Uganda—the pearl of Africa. The beauty of a peaceful sun setting could not erase our growing feeling that the flavour of a once promising land was evaporating. African kingdoms: The Bunyoro kingdom, the Buganda kingdom—its strength abolished and divided.

“If anyone who reads both the articraft in your creation …”

A mirror of minority alone in their difficult hours.

The people were divided, shaken by the expulsion, the elimination—Amin’s brutal reign of terror. Carpenters, mechanics, shoemakers and tailors—the middlemen. The sting of a privileged position? Never.

“With the context of the true reality for those who were ousted …”

Uprooted.

They looked back on the tiny store their grandfather established.

The political winds transformed into a choice. Minority eyes prevailed that day. Identify yourself; breakthrough for Uganda. The Asian presence of Kampala. His palace.

“The dictatorship of what happened …”

In their minds, their birth. Like precious jewels in a hairdo or turban, we heard stories of escape. They looked back on the homes they built.

His tombs were woven thatched roofs that swooped to a point high above the straw-laden floors below, lending a cathedral-like silence to the sacredness of the earth below where royal attendants continually watched over the remains of their dead kings.

“It has some really good depth in how you constructed this.”

The mountains appeared at sunset. The hillsides of women flowed in the breeze. The men brought comfort but their eyes told accounts of death.

Kampala—the arched and pillared windows were endless. Nestled behind sundown, an Indian dialect of silks and cottons. Our eyes lettered names like “Patel” and “Desai” “Bombay Emporium.”

The ashes of Uganda walked many miles and carried their heads. It was tedious work.

“How did you do this?”

It took years.

The image was small, this image. It was the same image they left behind. Why should we wait in line for justice?

“… tells a story almost in a biblical way …”

Help us begin to drink the pain of Uganda.

“… especially without changing the order of the words.”

“Oh my god, this is very good Chelene.”

—Dad.

With these missing pieces, I answer my own questions: am I even “mixed race?” What is this and what does it mean? I remember thinking about the terminology used to define those who did not fit neatly into categories of race. Mixed, bi-racial, blends, etc. I wonder if we can do better. I’ve been picking sides all my life. Switching sides when it suited me best, and always wondering how to “construct” this conversation with myself. Do I have to self-identify? Do I have to check a box on a form? Who wants to check “other” box? I don’t.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Chelene Knight lives in Vancouver, BC and is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio 2013 in the poetry cohort. Chelene is a Library Assistant at the Vancouver Public Library, and Managing Editor at Room. Previously, she worked as a Manuscript Consultant through SFU, and as a proofreader at Montecristo magazine along with other editor gigs with a poetry focus. She has been published in Amazing Canadian Fashion Magazine, Sassafras Literary Magazine, emerge, The Raven Chronicles Literary Magazine, and in Room 37.4. She just finished her second manuscript, Dear Current Occupant, a collection of sonnets, prose poems, and letters which is forthcoming with BookThug in 2018. Chelene is now dabbling in short short SHORT fiction. Her first book, Braided Skin, was published by Mother Tongue Publishing in Spring 2015. Find out more about Chelene at cheleneknight.com and @poetchelene.

I Wanted to Tell Him

Never sure how the word “dad” would sound coming out of my mouth or even the way it might feel as it slides off my tongue. What would it feel like for him to place a triple-scoop vanilla ice cream cone in my tiny five-year-old hand, and wipe the drips off my chin with a crumpled up napkin from his pocket, while we hear the people passing by whisper,

she looks just like him.

I wanted to tell him that when I think about how I grew up “mixed” the only word I taste is confusion and how it seemed to tower over my teenage mind like a translucent fog full of “what ifs” “how-comes” and “are you sure’s”. My Black mother raised me the best she could by herself, but I was angry, I’m still angry. My East Indian-Ugandan father, not visible, never visible, I can’t hug him like I want to. I can’t hear his voice like I want to … even when nothing else is audible.

I wanted to tell him that whatever memories I have of him always show up blurry and unrecognizable, fragmented and sparse except for the fact that we both like massive amounts of black pepper on our over-easy eggs (I learned this when I visited him at eleven years old and we both covered our eggs in the black sprinklings)—the very first similarity.

I wanted to tell him that it’s ok to call me his daughter, but whether or not he sees me as such I do not know.

I don’t want to know.

I wanted to tell him that I do not look like anyone else in my family. Some of the younger cousins are mixed in some way—but not my way. I don’t possess the soft beauty of my half Black, half White cousins. I do not possess the deep dark beauty of my mother and aunts because they hold the very things I always wished I had—there’s a beauty in knowing who you are.

I wanted to hide so that I wouldn’t have to answer questions about my father:

Is she Black? What is she? I think she’s East Indian. No, look at her hair, she’s definitely not Black. Where’s she from?

I wanted to tell him that when people ask who my father is I tell them about the eggs.

I wanted to tell him that I live in a city where everywhere you go, there’s mixed people. People dipped in all 364 shades of brown. People in coffee shops, bank lines, grocery stores, hair salons, libraries, crowded buses and over-booked restaurants. And when I walk down the street with my mother, my daughter, or my cousin, I don’t want to have to prove we are related by answering a series of questions, followed by a series of follow up questions, and then long stares, and “are you sure’s?” ending with my own deep sighs.

I wanted to tell him—to confess—that I wasn’t sure who I was back then or now, and that I told terrible lies to avoid the questions that always came:

You’ve got good hair. Why do your hair up. Let your hair down. Look how long your hair is when you straighten it. Smile, your hair is beautiful. Your hair looks good against your light skin, don’t you think?

I tell terrible lies.

I wanted to tell him that my then eight-year-old tri-racial daughter who’s now fourteen, used to ask me why she doesn’t have a grandpa, and that I had no answer for her because no one had an answer for me.

I wanted to tell him that when I look into the mirror now as a thirty-five-year-old mixed-race woman I still have no idea what I am supposed to see, and that I still wonder if living in between is ever a safe place to reside.

I wanted to tell him that when people tell me I’m beautiful it hurts for days and days.

When my daughter says she does not want to go to her dad’s for the weekend I tell her to hug her dad while she can. When she says her dad doesn’t understand, I tell her to explain things to her dad while she can. When I sort through old photos of my baby daughter smiling and posing with her dad, I say to myself, she will need these someday.

I tell her to write down all the things she wanted to tell him.

Then tell him.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Chelene Knight lives in Vancouver, BC and is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio 2013 in the poetry cohort. Chelene is a Library Assistant at the Vancouver Public Library, and Managing Editor at Room. Previously, she worked as a Manuscript Consultant through SFU, and as a proofreader at Montecristo magazine along with other editor gigs with a poetry focus. She has been published in Amazing Canadian Fashion Magazine, Sassafras Literary Magazine, emerge, The Raven Chronicles Literary Magazine, and in Room 37.4. She just finished her second manuscript, Dear Current Occupant, a collection of sonnets, prose poems, and letters which is forthcoming with BookThug in 2018. Chelene is now dabbling in short short SHORT fiction. Her first book, Braided Skin, was published by Mother Tongue Publishing in Spring 2015. Find out more about Chelene at cheleneknight.com and @poetchelene.

SNAPSHOT: a true story of love interrupted by invasion

Fusing words, dance, music and film this story chronicles the quest of a mixed-race daughter from Southern Appalachia who eventually finds her homeless Vietnam Veteran father suffering in Hawaii. SNAPSHOT was nominated for BEST ACTRESS at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, special selection at: Cape Town Festival South Africa and International Women’s Festival Tornio Finland and recipient of: Brooklyn Arts Council Individual Artist Grant, and Kentucky Foundation for Women Arts Meets Activism Grant. See the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdNsYF6UJro

West Virginia PBS premiere Sunday November 10 at 8pm and Tuesday November 26 at 9pm

Find out more about this storyteller at: www.mitzisinnott.com