For readers of Ross Gay and listeners of Therapy for Black Girls, a reflective examination of Black self-love and joy that guides the reader to ditch old beliefs, achieve difficult unlearnings and redefine language, relationships and love to find their own unique path to joy.
A warm, candid and essential book that will guide the reader to carve a new path to joy as unique as each individual. Created by the founder of Breathing Space Creative Literary Studio, acclaimed writer and editor Chelene Knight, Let It Go draws on personal experience and the advice of leaders from various Black communities to share hard-won tools for joy-discovery—tools such as how to say no with love; how to call back activities that feel good; how to reshape communication with those closest to you; how to revise language; and most of all, how to learn to let go in order to redefine what we think joy is.
Organized around the seasons and the natural cycle of reflection and renewal, Let It Go showcases, through conversation and solitary reflection, the broad spectrum of Black realities and reveals the colourful kaleidoscope of joy and your own ways to find it.
From Let It Go:
“My own path to joy has been blurred by hardship, but part of my journey is that I refuse to believe that all of my negative experiences are tethered to being a Black woman, even though it can feel like this, even when some people want me to feel like this. And when I feel it, it’s a pain that swells and refuses to subside. I didn’t learn this on my own and I don’t think I can unlearn it on my own. But I’m willing to do the work. I want my joy as I find it; I want my joy as it comes. I’m willing to let the wind push me backwards through the difficult moments. Maybe there’s something big holding you back too. Take a breath. What is it? Maybe we can let go, together.”
Dear Current Occupant is a creative nonfiction memoir about home and belonging set in the 80s and 90s of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Using a variety of forms including letters, essays and poems, Knight reflects on her childhood through a series of letters addressed to all of the current occupants now living in the twenty different houses she moved in and out of with her mother and brother. From blurry and fragmented non-chronological memories of trying to fit in with her own family as the only mixed East Indian/Black child, to crystal clear recollections of parental drug use, Knight draws a vivid portrait of memory that still longs for a place and a home.
Peering through windows and doors into intimate, remembered spaces now occupied by strangers, Knight writes to them in order to deconstruct her own past. From the rubble of memory she then builds a real place in order to bring herself back home.
