Dear Current Occupant: A Memoir

By Chelene Knight

From Vancouver-based writer Chelene Knight, Dear Current Occupant is a creative non-fiction memoir about home and belonging set in the 80s and 90s of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Using a variety of forms, 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 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookhug Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781771663915

Chelene Knight

CHELENE KNIGHT is the author of the novel Junie, which was longlisted for the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction; the memoir Dear Current Occupant, winner of the 2018 Vancouver Book Award and longlisted for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature; and Braided Skin. Her essays have appeared in multiple Canadian and American publications. Previously the managing editor at Room magazine and the director of the Growing Room Festival in Vancouver, Knight has also worked as a poetry professor at the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia and as a literary agent at the Transatlantic Agency. Knight has now founded her own literary studio, Breathing Space Creative, through which she’s launched the Forever Writers Club, a membership for writers focused on creative sustainability; the Thrive coaching program; and the Rise author care program. 

Book preview

Title page: Dear Current Occupant: A Memoir by Chelene Knight, published by Book*hug 2018

Copyright © 2018 by Chelene Knight

all rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The photographs on page 8 and on pages 54–70 are by Jade Melnychuk /

jadecreativeco.com

. Used with permission.

Map Illustration on page 53 by Jesse Huisken.

The production of this book was made possible through the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Book*hug also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Book Fund.

Book*hug acknowledges the land on which it operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and, most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Knight, Chelene, 1981-, author

      Dear current occupant : a memoir / Chelene Knight.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77166-390-8 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-77166-391-5 (HTML).--

ISBN 978-1-77166-392-2 (PDF).--ISBN 978-1-77166-393-9 (Kindle)

      1. Creative nonfiction, Canadian (English). 2. Knight, Chelene,

1981-. I. Title.

PS8621.N53D43 2018 C818'.603 C2017-908060-1

C2017-908061-X

for Adelaide Riordan

1936–2017

"I dream loud in this house. I pull my bed

down from that wall, and I fall to my knees

next to it to question this shelter.

I sleep while a limp breeze dies at the window,

waking to dawn tangled with my dust.

This is my house."

—Patricia Smith, Only Everything I Own

Clark Drive

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Clark Drive

Prologue

I think about all the houses

This is for the teachers.

Grade six.

Waiting out front of the school to be picked up was torture.

When the smoke cleared

Mama.

Dear Current Occupant: Part One

House with the sign in the window

Origami house with the handmade roof

Duplex near Fraser Street with the picture books in the closet

Letter to Santa

House with the green door on East 12th Avenue

Basement suite on Earles Street

Apartment above the East Indian sweet shop just off 49th

Palms Motel, Kingsway

House we all shared on Forgotten Street

Two-toned red-and-white brick house on 41st behind the church

Witness Statements

I didn’t have a father.

Pack your things.

apartment 301 near the low track

white house where some family lived upstairs,

most holidays

like a lion in the trees

of the last house I remember,

cracks in the sidewalk

Walking tour, a map

Broadway and Commercial

41st Avenue between Victoria and Elliott, back

Clark Drive 2

Clark Drive 3

East 12th Avenue (off Commercial)

41st Avenue between Wales and Clarendon

East 12th between Windsor and Fraser, back alley

East 12th between Windsor and Fraser, back alley

Clark Drive traffic

East 12th between Windsor and Fraser, front door

East 13th Avenue, attic

East 13th Avenue, front

East 41st between Victoria and Elliott

Broadway and Commercial, back

East 41st between Victoria and Elliott, roof

Fraser and 13th

Kingsway and Fraser

Kingsway Hotel

Kingsway Hotel, side view

View from front window of East 12th

Gate, white house

Clark Drive intersection

Mailboxes

Dear Current Occupant: Part Two

She’s at the recovery house for the third time,

Apartment on Clark Drive above the convenience store,

For Uncle Eugene

Owl House Women and Children’s Shelter,

The room in the attic of the oldest place we’ve stayed

Pink building, Broadway and 12th,

House with the attic apartment where kittens disappear,

Neighbour, this is for your daughter,

One-room apartment above the grocery store,

Third-floor corner unit apartment, East Broadway,

House where I accidentally dyed my hair blond,

Of every yard I didn’t have

Mirror Talk

let your hair down.

the eyes have it.

these hands

these lips taste water

Notices of Termination

the occupants of these suites must adhere to the following rules:

damage noted

I broke the rules on purpose

someone slashed the tops off coconuts so we could drink the milk

Miss Parker

Lay your head on my pillow.

epilogue

mama, you need to know some things.

Endnotes

home.

black and female while writing.

never sure how the word Dad

the cracks in the narrative

Acknowledgements

Thank-yous

Notes

About the Author

Colophon

Prologue

I think about all the houses

and I try to remember the little details—I used to cough from the mixed fumes in the air, while Mama’s cigarette smoke and pine cleaner pinned my eyelids to

Reviews for Dear Current Occupant

[lindsay_w_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

By visiting all the houses she grew up in, in Vancouver’s Eastside, Chelene Knight has pieced together a very personal and powerful exploration of her identity. What resonated most for me was her note to teachers. As a teacher-librarian, it reminded me of the importance of having a rich selection of own voices titles in school libraries. “Looking back at my younger self, I wonder what would have changed for me had I ever been handed a book written by a Black female author.” (17)

[c_why · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Muddled. Quite good at the start, increasingly "transcendent" as it went along, so that by the end -- very little was connecting.