A Mother Apart: Existential Quest of a Rejected Jamaican Child Turned Adult Artist

 By Liz Braun

Rating: A

A Mother Apart is a compelling documentary about Jamaican-American artist Staceyann Chin and the most important influence in her life: her absent mother.

The film presents Chin — a ferocious poet, performing artist, author and LGBTQ+ rights activist — working through past abandonment trauma and figuring out how to keep it all from affecting how she raises her own daughter. The film is more a mother’s journey than a straightforward biopic, but it paints a vivid portrait of Chin and her capacity for love, not to mention her iron-clad perseverance. 

Staceyann Chin

Chin and her brother were left behind in the 1970s when their mother Hazel quit Jamaica for a new relationship and a new life in Canada. Hazel returned briefly when Chin was a little girl, only to leave again; the incalculable pain of this experience has fueled much of Chin’s formidable art. 

Early on in A Mother Apart, Chin considers how her own bleak background might come to affect her little daughter Zuri. With that protective impulse in mind, she sets out to learn more about the mother she never really knew.

Chin visits the house where her mother lived in Montreal, meets neighbours who knew Hazel well and eventually discovers that her mother has moved to Germany. 

At the same time, she talks about her own childhood and eventual escape from Jamaica. Chin was handed off to other relatives when her grandmother could no longer take care of her. Her adolescence was spent trying to outrun unwanted sexual advances, sometimes from her own cousins, and when she went to college she was assaulted by a group of fellow students.

As a lesbian, she was already marginalized in Jamaica for her orientation; the attack on campus helped her decide to move to America.

Chin found success in the U.S. She settled in Brooklyn, married a beloved friend and was quickly widowed. Later, she conceived a child with help from her late husband’s brother, and her daughter Zuri was born in 2012. Raised in an environment of secrets and lies, Chin is completely open with her daughter. And she is completely open about her own life, speaking with candour about herself and her mother. 

When the pandemic arrives, Chin loses touch with her mother again. She goes to Jamaica with her daughter to regroup when COVID shuts down the world. But eventually, she dutifully returns to Germany to find her mother again and reconnect with a younger sister. 

Canadian director Laurie Townshend has a wealth of material to work with for A Mother Apart, including archival video and stills, performance footage of Chin and interviews with people from Hazel’s past as well as with Chin, her daughter Zuri and Hazel herself. Chin brings tremendous energy to the documentary and it is often exhilarating, but overall it is a heart-rending document.

What is profoundly moving about A Mother Apart is witnessing how Chin has dealt with all of this — by parenting her own parent and staying in contact with her mother as best she can, visiting, checking up on her, helping, extending compassion. 

“It’s the decent thing to do,” Chin states. 

“It’s a kindness I can offer her and offer myself … to practice loving a thing that may not be able to love you back.” Chin embraces the radical act of forgiveness.

A Mother Apart was launched on CBC Gem early in March, just in time for International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month.  Women get short shrift on the calendar, that’s for sure, but the film is available on Gem and on the NFB website. 

You could make a point of watching A Mother Apart on Mother’s Day, May 11.  

A Mother Apart: Directed by Laurie Townshend, written by Ricardo Acosta, Alison Duke and Laurie Townshend, with Staceyann Chin. Streaming on CBC Gem and available for viewing HERE.