^{Staceyann Chin embarks on her healing search in A Mother Apart.
Photo: Laurie Townshend for Oya Media Group}

Review by Rebecca M. Alvin

In the opening of Laurie Townshend’s new documentary A Mother Apart, the film’s subject, poet and activist Staceyann Chin says she knows that her first wound in life was her mother leaving her and her brother in their native Jamaica when she was nine years old to go off and live a different life with someone else in Montreal, Canada. But, she says, it wasn’t her mother that hurt her the most, “I was most bruised by the people who wanted me silenced.”

Perhaps it is that deeper bruise, the one that told her she should not speak about her mother’s betrayal or about the things that happened to her in the aftermath, that set her on the path to using her voice in such a powerful way as a writer, as a feminist, as a voice for those who are unable to speak with as much intelligence and magnetism as Staceyann Chin.

As open and clear as Chin is in the film, and as beautifully made as Townshend’s work is, there will be a lot to discuss after the screening, which Chin will attend here in town for Womxn of Color Weekend. The film impressed upon me the connections one feels with other mothers as they navigate the minefield of motherhood as single women. But in Chin’s case, the failures of her own mother and the healing that she still goes through add another layer to the experience. 

As a young girl in Jamaica, Chin explains she was one of many children who were left behind by parents seeking a better life elsewhere. She says there is even a name for these children: “barrel children,” because their parents would send them a barrel filled with clothing and other products from abroad, which was a great event in these children’s lives. But Chin says her mother never sent her any barrels. In fact, her mother often wouldn’t answer her phone calls and letters, disappeared for long stretches, and provided unending obstacles to their relationship. But Chin never let her go.

Although the film does not discuss Chin’s father, nor her brother who was also left behind (in fact, the absence of men in the film is glaring and prompts questions about what role they have played in Chin’s life), Townshend does include Chin’s mother Hazel, as well as her stepsister, Larah, who she didn’t meet until later in life. The film is a remarkably matrilineal piece, speaking about pain and forgiveness, about being victimized without becoming a victim, and about how women’s lives often force choices that one cannot always justify. But as Chin puts it, when you are young you are freer to be angry at those who have let you down, but as you age, you are able to see things differently, especially when you become a parent. As she says in the film, “The minute you start failing other people, that’s when you start finding grace for the people that failed you.”

A Mother Apart will screen at the Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St., Provincetown, on Thursday, June 5, 4 – 6:30 p.m., including a live Q&A with Staceyann Chin, as part of the Womxn of Color Weekend, June 4 – 8. For tickets ($35) visit onlyatthecrown.com, and for more information about the weekend, visit womxnofcolorweekend.com