• ELIXHER
• On September 18, 2013

“I wish I could just tell everybody how I feel about everything. I am tired of pretending. But I am too afraid that no one will like me without the parts of me I have worked so hard to make up.”
- Staceyann Chin

Staceyann Chin is a warrior. A performance artist and human rights activist, she is defiant, outspoken – a force to be reckoned with. As a queer mama with a potty mouth, Staceyann is one of my personal Black lesbian icons. She writes honestly about the emotional and physical realities of being a lesbian who actively chose motherhood.

“She’s always so angry.” “She seems so bitter.” “I like her, but damn, she’s full of rage.”

These are the reactions I receive whenever I sing Staceyann’s praises after reading her latest blog on motherhood, or one of her Facebook or Twitter statuses that serves a gut punch to patriarchy, homophobia or religious oppression.

Her first book and memoir, The Other Side of Paradise, is equal in its honesty, as it takes us on her journey from growing up in Lottery, Jamaica with her Grandmother Bernice and older brother Delano, to her decision to adopt New York City as her new home, leaving Jamaica and the pain associated with it.

Chin opens old wounds and exposes the root of her scars. Born prematurely to an absent father and a mother who soon abandons her, she spends her early years poor, but relatively happy playing “Superman” and attending school with Delano, and listening to her grandmother impress the significance of religious obedience. When financial strain separates Staceyann and Delano from their grandmother, and later from each other, she is forced to fight for her life alone, among family members, schoolmates and authority figures who wish to silence her. She relives the pain of abandonment and rejection throughout her childhood as she is bounced from house to house.

The men in her life are distant, if not abusive, and the women fail to serve as her refuge, save for her grandmother – to whom the memoir is dedicated – and a few select playmates and teachers. She is berated, teased, molested and physically beaten, which only strengthens her audacity to question and analyze everything. Parts of her memoir brought to mind Mia McKenzie’s The Summer We Got Free, in the way adults tried to douse the fire of a child who was too advanced to swallow the societal rules of respectability, modesty and conformity.

There are hints of her understanding and coming into her sexual identity, portrayed mostly through girlhood and adolescent crushes that were mixed with an intense, basic need for friendship and acceptance. When she finally comes out as a lesbian, she comes out roaring, and challenges the pretense of progressiveness on her college campus. Her “live out loud” persona is met with threats, more abandonment by supposed friends, and a climactic bathroom scene that makes her question the authenticity of her strength, the validity of her voice, and propels her final decision to move to New York City.

The way Staceyann relates her experiences is raw and painful, yet tender. Her storytelling is a beautiful combination of strength and vulnerability. Readers may be surprised by her tone, which juxtaposed with her videos and other social media platforms, is more subdued. This is due in part to the retrospective nature of a memoir, her capabilities as a wordsmith, and her innate perseverance and determination to not only survive, but succeed. Her fortitude in the face of adversaries and the would-be destroyers who were supposed to protect her, is empowering. In her epilogue, she discusses her active soul-work to heal her wounds and forgive those who hurt her, and I think this is evident in the language she uses throughout the book.

It is easy to see how the issues of colorism, sexism, religious oppression and classism that showed up in her childhood shape her politics as an adult. They are the foundation on which Staceyann’s justifiable and rightly-placed anger is built. In her prologue she writes, “[…] in the absence of the most basic facts, I have had to create my own story and, in many ways, set my own course.” Combined with her current work as a human rights activist, radical mother and revolutionary, Staceyann proves that we determine the effect of the past on our present course, and despite the external circumstances, salvation, peace and a sense of belonging are cultivated from within.

The Other Side of Paradise is emotionally turbulent, heart-wrenching, and hopeful. It will lead you to examine the places that need healing in your own life, and inspire you to honor your own determination to claim your rightful place as a queer, black warrior.

- Nitra Wisdom

Nitra Wisdom is a freelance copy editor and proofreader who is working on her first collection of short stories and personal essays. The self-described queer introverted bibliophile received her B.A. in Pan African Studies from the University of Louisville and currently lives in Atlanta, GA where she blogs about love, literature, being a wounded healer and the Divinity of Femininity at wiseedits.wordpress.com.