Mobility Matters: A Black/Caribbean-Canadian in the Midwest

It was in Canada, our home [on] Native land,^[i] a white settler colony, that I realized I was Black, a process that developed over time spatially and temporally. Indeed, the journey to the “here and now” is marked by multiple migrations from Jamaica to Canada and then to the United States of America. Both forms of mobility set the stage for how I came to think about and understand identity, belonging, and community. In analyzing my current identity as a middle-class Black/Canadian Christian feminist living in the Midwest, I return to St. Andrew, Jamaica. In this parish, I spent my formative years. Indeed, the person I am cannot be divorced from the social environment, which fostered a positive sense of identity, one rooted in other markers despite my family’s socio-economic status.  From basic to secondary school, my teachers (Ms. Rose, Ms. Smith, and Ms. Richards, now Newell) cultivated my love for learning and affirmed, nurtured, and validated my intelligence and curiosity. Then, there was Mrs. Chapman, a white woman in my district who recognized my insatiable appetite for reading and allowed me to borrow books from her well-stocked library. After the devastation of failing the then Common Entrance Exam, it was Mrs. Chapman who enrolled me in Papine Secondary (now High) School and purchased my school uniform. Instrumental in my socialization was my non-biological great-grandmother, affectionately called “Goddie.” She instilled in me the values of hard work, a sense of community, and standing up for myself. Also of significance is the Seventh Day Adventist church in building my confidence. Weekly, my literacy skills were utilized, and on special occasions, we visited a larger church, where I recited poems or scriptures from memory. Migration to Canada, specifically to the suburbs of Brampton, Ontario, introduced me to a different world, one often incomprehensible to a young girl who grew up in a rural community.

This essay maps the role mobility plays in developing my identity and subjectivity, though written here as separate, are inextricably interconnected. I explore how moving within and across borders shaped my sense of self, a process which Althusser’s concept of interpellation can best describe. Thus, I underscore key interactions, exchanges, and confrontations- often presented in chronological order, even if cognitively, there were moments when I could not explicate their significance.

 Over time, I learned that these experiences were/are refracted through my position as an Other as I navigated new cultures. At various stages on this sojourn, I would come to claim one or multiple intersecting identities, Black/Caribbean, feminist, Christian, middle-class woman. Indeed, my politics of location, “those places and spaces [I] inherit and occupy, which frame [my life] in very specific and concrete ways,”^[ii] impacts not just who I am, but my scholarship, teaching, and activism.

There is a consensus that personal recollections do not provide unadulterated access to the past based on the reliability of people’s memories. Consequently, I draw on discussions (with the permission of individuals) to legitimize my recollections and elucidate my identity and subjectivity formation over time. Moreover, naming people is also about paying homage to those who helped me become the person I am and am still becoming.

In an uninitiated WhatsApp conversation with Mrs. Newell, my favourite secondary school teacher, she reminded me that I “was a strong language student,” adding, “You were very competitive, smaller than most of the others but never backed down from anyone, very feisty….”^[iii] The girl Mrs. Newell remembered so fondly had difficulty adjusting to her new home, a predominantly white suburb, also reflected in my high school composition. In addition to students making fun of my accent and clothes, my first recognition that I was different, I learned quickly that the affirmation I was accustomed to in Jamaica was a thing of the past. I often yearned for the familiar comforts of back home, for teachers, friends, and my church family. Eventually, I made friends, had teachers I liked, and soon accepted Canada as my new home.

Grade 13, the last year of high school, was pivotal for me; I began to think about blackness and being Black. As with most Canadian schools, the presence of and the contributions of indigenous and racialized peoples was hardly reflected in the curriculum. Indeed, the first time I read a book by a Black author was Alice Walker’s The Color Purple for Mrs. Morton’s English class. I was curious about why Morton chose the book. She explained, “I know that I put a few books on because I felt they would create new knowledge awareness and, at minimum, a discussion -more questions than answers. Perhaps, too, an exploration of more reading of Black literature, and it did. That appreciation could transfer to real life”.^[iv] And Morton was correct. I could relate to the relationship between Celie and her sister, and I also bore witness to and had personal knowledge of spousal violence. The class completed a book review. I recall the joy I felt learning about reading about Walker. I had yet to identify as Black, but I was learning about Black people.

Meanwhile, I learned about the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. history classes taught by two of my favourite teachers, Richard Luft and Rosemary Evans. However, the highlight for me was the Black History Month (BHM)^[v] celebration, the brainchild of Evans. I went from knowing little Black history to participating in a play highlighting the sacrifices and struggles of notable African Americans for equality. I played the part of actress, singer, and Civil Rights activist Lena Horne. It was an amazing intellectual and social experience. As I stood on the stage, it felt great! Not only were Black people the focus, but the gaze of the white student body was directed at us.

As I began researching and writing about Black people in Canada, I often returned to that BHM celebration. In addition to the play, our guest speaker was Lincoln Alexander, Canada’s first Black Member of Parliament (MP) and Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. I thought it ironic that despite Alexander’s contribution to Black Canadian history, neither he nor other Black/Caribbean Canadians were featured in the play. My knowledge about Black Canadians would come much later as I pursued graduate studies at the University of Windsor (UW) and later York University (YU). Windsor was fundamental in my identity formation.

A comprehensive institution in southwestern Ontario, UW had a demographic similar to my high school. Compared to my high school, however, it felt like UW had a lot of Black people. Windsor, a contested and far from an ideal space, was the site of my consciousness-raising. I was fed intellectually by the courses I took with Christina Simmons and Bruce Tucker. I also joined organizations that centred on Black people’s interests socially and politically. The Caribbean Students Association (CARISA) had the best parties and annual culture shows. Politically, the Black Students Alliance (BSA) was critical to developing my racial consciousness and identity. The Black men who created and led campus organizations like their historical predecessors believed that racism was the primary oppression Black people faced. While there was no critique of Black male patriarchy, BSA taught me the importance of solidarity and forging alliances, exemplified by the organization The African Students Against Apartheid (ASA). Indeed, UW was a hotbed of protest activities, some of which I participated in. One of our greatest accomplishments was lobbying the university to divest its investments from South Africa, becoming the first institution in Canada to do so.

I cannot recall the year Avonie Brown arrived on campus; this striking, intelligent Black woman, also of Caribbean descent, with a beautiful voice, introduced me to the principles of feminism. Brown also attempted to expand the boundaries of blackness by advocating for a more inclusive BSA. In 1992, BSA had an executive comprised entirely of Black women; with Brown as president, I was the secretary. BSA’s agenda changed drastically that year, and so did I. I learned quickly that there was no monolithic Black community, we were fractured notably on gender and sexuality lines. Brown wanted Black students to confront and deal with the issues of sexism and homophobia in our organizations. The notion that identity is fluid, unstable, and far from permanent applies here.

 No sooner had I embraced a Black/Caribbean identity; I had to think about gender, sexism, and my homophobia. The highlight of my undergraduate experience was when Brown arranged for bell hooks to visit campus. We had lunch with hooks and then went to her talk. After hooks’ presentation, some of us discussed various issues for hours. Whatever preconceived notions my friend Janet and I had about feminists, we loved hooks.

I purchased Feminist Theory from Margin to Center and Talking Back: Thinking Feminist Thinking Black, signed by hooks. My library expanded to include books such as Toni Cade Bambara The Black Woman and Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. Using the feminist scholarship introduced in Simmons and Tucker’s class, I developed a feminist critique but was also willing to claim the feminist title. With Detroit’s proximity to Windsor, I also began to think about Blackness globally or to use today’s framework transnationally. I was able to identify similarities that Black people shared across borders. I remember being stunned by the death of Malice Green, who, like Rodney King, was beaten by white police officers. Members of BSA attended a mass protest in Detroit.

 I developed an affinity and love for Detroit for all kinds of reasons, due to space constraints, I am unable to explicate and would later foreground the city in my Black Women in the Diaspora course that I taught at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). In addition to exploring the resilience of Black people, we explore the economic, political, and social factors that led to the demise of what was once a boom city and the impact on Black women while underscoring connections with the Caribbean due to structural adjustment policies.

UW provided a fertile ground for me to think about knowledge production and Black people in Canada, which I pursued as a graduate student at UW and more so at YU. I was the first Black woman to be admitted to the Women’s Studies Program at York University, which at the time was the only free-standing program in the country. York brought with it new challenges. These included, but were not limited to, my fear of failure and the implications this would have on future Black students, my limited knowledge of feminist theory, the near absence of Indigenous and racialized women in the curriculum, and what I would later learn was the politics of respectability. I was an unapologetic dancehall fan, embodied most notably in my clothes and hairstyle. Indeed, I was admonished for what appears to some to be my collusion in a patriarchal misogynistic enterprise. Older Caribbean women regarded my clothing as an affront to the race and were repeatedly asked to wear clothing that reflected my status as a Ph.D. student.

I was expected to represent the race well. It also became painfully clear that my feminism was suspect. I wanted to fit in. I stopped perming my hair and wearing extensions, opting instead for a natural hairstyle, and chose to wear less revealing and fitted clothing, but I was unhappy. I did not find my love for dancehall incompatible with feminism; it is feminism that allowed me to bring a critical eye to dancehall. I decided to end this intensely and painful period and chose to embrace that I am “a walking contradiction,” which a peer claimed I was. For me, the privilege of researching, writing, and producing scholarship about Black women became more important than being judged based on superficial aesthetics.

The Women’s Studies program gave me the interdisciplinary tools to do meaningful scholarship and foreground the nexus between theory and practice, which appealed to me. I was deeply involved in various forms of activism in and outside of York University. At CHRY, York University Community Radio Station (a male-dominated sphere), where I worked, I planned and researched on-air shows that addressed women’s issues. I participated in, marched, and protested gun violence against Black men and women’s poverty. When YorkU professors or TAs went on strike around working conditions and wages, I was on the picket line and wrote about the strike as a columnist in Share, Canada’s largest ethnic newspaper. Viewed as the most radical campus in Ontario, and the entire Canada, York continues to serve as a reminder of the importance of building coalition across differences.

It’s been over two decades since I moved to the United States, and the journey has been more than rewarding despite a few challenges, which is to be expected. Before teaching at UIUC, I taught at St. Cloud State University in the Women’s Studies Program. It was a great environment to begin my career. I developed wonderful relationships with a diverse group of women and

remain close friends with June Parrot, an African American. We share the same values and bond as Black feminists. I found a new home in the African American Studies Program three years later. To write that I loved working in African American Studies was an understatement, especially during the first couple of years. I felt at home that I belonged. I loved going to work; not only was I working with a community of women and men who looked like me; I was also teaching primarily African American/Black students. The director at the time had a wonderful vision for building the program, and I felt proud to be a part of a dream to be the number one Black Studies Program in the United States at a public institution.

More importantly, I believe then as I do now, that Black/Africana/African American Studies have a fundamental role to play on college campuses. Besides engaging our students academically and producing ground-breaking scholarship, Black/Africana/African American Studies, other ethnic and Gender and Women’s Studies departments ought to act as the campus’s conscience in all matters relating to equity, belonging, and acceptance sometimes comes with a price, which can be painful for the people who crave belonging. It was not long after that I discovered fissures in the Program. Though not always mutually exclusive, the program was divided into ideological, generational, and disciplinary lines. Interdisciplinary faculty whose scholarship focused on Black people outside the United States felt undervalued, and some senior faculty felt that junior scholars acted entitled. Some members of the program believed that African Americans were the quintessential representation of blackness, inadvertently setting up counter-productive discourses. Statements such as “those of you who do the Diaspora,” as if we are not all focusing on the African diaspora in our scholarship, were troubling given the explicit definition of Diaspora. For various reasons, I eventually moved a portion of my line into Gender and Women’s Studies. Sometimes, I feel nostalgic about the program (now Department) and reminisce and think back to what was, is, and can still be.

As I write this, I’m living as a Caribbean-Canadian immigrant in a political climate that is beyond surreal. In 2016, Donald Trump was elected president. There were times I felt a sense of hopelessness and fear. In response, I drew on the tenets of my faith and tried to get involved politically while being cognizant of my non-citizenship status. When Biden was elected in 2020, I remember his referencing African Americans in his speech and his knowledge of the power of the Black vote. Despite a Democratic president, we are witnessing renewed attacks on reproductive and Civil Rights, broadly conceived. Indeed, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has set the stage for renewed attacks in other areas, such as affirmative action and voter registration. Florida’s “anti-woke act” has reverberated in other states. We are still experiencing the aftermath of COVID-19, which brought sharp relief to existing structural inequalities. The pandemic disproportionately impacted Black and Brown people. The loss of human capital will have repercussions for years to come.

Why do you not return to Canada? This is a question I have been asked repeatedly by various people. I often think about this line from one of my favourite songs, “Untold Stories.” Buju Banton sings, “Who can afford to run will run, but what about those who can’t they will have to stay.”  I recognize that I have the privilege “to run.” I do not doubt for a second that I would fit right back in, but I also know that the homes we leave behind are never the same when we return. The truth is, while the times we live in are frightening, I am not ready to return to Canada for all kinds of reasons. Often, I return to memories of another time, my activism at UW and YU, for inspiration and to remind myself that “betta must come.” I also pray often. I teach and bear witness to a generation of activists that hopefully will usher in the revolution we have been waiting for.  

Author Biography

Karen Flynn is the Terrance & Karyn Holm Endowed Professor in the Department of Population Health Nursing Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago. College of Nursing and director of the Midwest Nursing History Research Center. Flynn is the author of the award-winning book, her award-winning book Moving Beyond Borders: Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the African Canadian Diaspora. Flynn is in the process of completing a second book project tentatively titled The Black Pacific: The African Diaspora in East Asia, which maps the travel itineraries of young Black English as Foreign Language teachers across borders, which McGill-Queen’s University Press will publish.

Flynn is also a public scholar who believes that theory must not be accessible and translated into practice. Thus, she writes passionately about contemporary issues, considering race, gender, class, sexuality, nation, and equity. Flynn had a column in Share, Canada’s largest ethnic newspaper. She has written op-ed articles for Now Magazine, the Toronto Star, and Rabble.ca. She was also a freelance writer for Canada Extra, Swaymag.ca and most recently for Origins.  In addition to her writings, Dr. Flynn has been tapped for expertise for the Toronto Star, U.S.A, Today, and ESPN’s Undefeated and other mediums.

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