Her chosen exile
Staceyann Chin is a fiery poet who with the conviction to openly defend her right to have sex with whomever she wishes, male or female. But, at this point in time, for her, it’s all women.
Not burdened with the weight of propriety, recently the New York-based Mount Alvernia High School old girl and university graduate, in two shocking performances in Jamaica revealed information about her chosen exile.
The first was at the Calabash International Literary Festival at Treasure Beach, and a few days later at the Poetry Society of Jamaica 12th anniversary celebration at the Edna Manley College of the Performing Arts.
While confessing to living her life looking over her shoulder, she has no qualms about who she is.
“If I want to wear slandals, I wear them. And if I want to wear skirts, I wear them. So, if I want to be with women, I just be with women,” she said defiantly.
However, she gave this writer a peep into her antecedent that perhaps led to her voluntary exhile, for which she is paying a price.
“Well my father and I aren’t close. My mother and I are just becoming friends because I searched for her when I was 25 and found her. I never had any contact with her. Since I was about nine years old I never had any contact with my mother. She lives in Germany and she and I are currently trying to forge a relationship.
“My father and I, we don’t have much to say to each other. I’m pretty much the Jamaican kid when it comes to fathering. My father has very little to do with me….,” she admitted.
The following excerpt is taken from one of her autobiographical pieces that brought her much acclaim in America where she has performed at numerous high schools and universities.
“…..Between the folds of my feather-filled, fleece-lined, blue and white comforter
My green heaven paradox
Evolves into the idyllic island
A place that denies Greece
Of green-eyed men
Who intending and protest
In their greed
Kill trees
Their erect carnivorous hotels
Inviting more white people
To come feed on the blackened flesh of the natives
Have them serve it to you
Just like pre-emancipation
Only this time
They are willing
And in my longing for this place
I still call home
I forget that everytime
I’m successful in this art
My father is embarrassed
For which is craft
I tell stories
And before his oriental lips
Can speak the coward’s denial
Everybody finds out about the tall black girl
From the darkerside of Montego Bay
And the child
Still here
Shaming everybody but the grandmother
And only because
She can’t hear
The things the child’s writing about
In the white-washed silence of this uprooted urban life
I yearn for the quiet of the Montego hills
The quiet with my grandmother calling my name
Above the soft hum of old women praying for my mother when my father denied that I was his
And then I remembered
That in such a place
A woman could only come in secret for me there
And I feared that I would not have the courage to write
And I want to write
More than I want to live
So now
I live here
Among the strangers
And the poets
Here where the curve of my fingers
Is not so bound by the weight of propriety
Here where other bruised knuckles bleed the fury of revolution
I’m here
Away from the carnival
And the colour of my hip-swinging home
Writing angry woman poems in the dead of December
Dancing quick to the rapid step of a nine-week summer
Nostalgia buried beneath the music of rebellion
My body swaying with open conviction
I’m armed
I’m armed with this knowledge
And the responsibility of this
My chosen exile”
