By Tayler Montague, IDA
“After I did years of work around my own healing, I began to see my mother’s leaving me was perhaps the first wound. The greatest subsequent wombs were the people who told me all the things that happened to you because your mother left… you should not speak them.”
So begins Laurie Townshend’s A Mother Apart, a documentary that allows Staceyann Chin to tell the story of her abandonment by her mother, Hazel. Chin proudly identifies as Caribbean, Black, Asian, lesbian, a woman, and a resident of New York City, as well as a Jamaican national who has spent her entire career speaking candidly about her own life. Her truths traverse forms like stage plays (Motherstruck), memoirs (The Other Side of Paradise), and poetry collections (Crossfire: A Litany for Survival). Her commitment to speaking aloud, boldly, and plainly is integral to Chin’s artistry—A Mother Apart feels like a continuation of that work.
It was very clear from the film’s screening at BlackStar that A Mother Apart is a collaborative effort made with care. I went in blindly, arriving at the Kimmel Center with my homegirl Stephanye Watts of the Be Reel Black Cinema Club. It was the perfect festival to see a film like this. Like Steph pointed out when we were there, it was great to hear aloud the “hmmms” and laughter as well as silence when ruminating upon an idea in tandem. Seeing it with this particular audience was truly resonant, a testament to the community that Maori Karmael Holmes and the BlackStar team have built. Not only because of the meticulous thinking behind the programming, which brought about a great deal of amazing documentary films about the intricacies of Black life, but because the lifeblood of the festival is rooted in showcasing Black, Brown, and Indigenous stories.
