Let It Go: Free Yourself from Old Beliefs and Find a New Path to Joy

HarperCollins Canada, January 2, 2024

“This book is a wonder. It is simultaneously a celebration of one woman’s becoming and an invitation for all of us to rediscover our joy. Chelene Knight has given us a workbook for the soul. It feels relevant yet ancient, profound yet accessible, practical yet never preachy. A much-needed transmission from the ancestors.” — Antonio Michael Downing, author of Saga Boy

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 you to carve a new path to joy as unique as each of us. Written 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.” 

Junie

Book*hug September 13, 2022

LONG-LISTED FOR THE INAUGURAL CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION & CBC ‘s CANADA READS

A riveting exploration of the complexity within mother-daughter relationships and the dynamic vitality of Vancouver's former Hogan's Alley neighbourhood.

1930s, Hogan's Alley—a thriving Black and immigrant community located in Vancouver's East End. Junie is a creative, observant child who moves to the alley with her mother, Maddie: a jazz singer with a growing alcohol dependency. Junie quickly makes meaningful relationships with two mentors and a girl her own age, Estelle, whose resilient and entrepreneurial mother is grappling with white scrutiny and the fact that she never really wanted a child.

As Junie finds adulthood, exploring her artistic talents and burgeoning sexuality, her mother sinks further into the bottle while the thriving neighbourhood—once gushing with potential—begins to change. As her world opens, Junie intuits the opposite for the community she loves.

Told through the fascinating lens of a bright woman in an oft-disquieting world, this book is intimate and urgent—not just an unflinching look at the destruction of a vibrant community, but a celebration of the Black lives within.

Dear Current Occupant

Winner of the 2018 Vancouver Book Award!

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 South Asian/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.

Braided Skin

Braided Skin is the vibrant and edgy telling of experiences of mixed ethnicity, urban childhood, poverty and youthful dreams through various voices. In her debut book Knight writes a confident rhythm of poetry, prose and erasure by using the recurring trope and image of braiding--a different metaphor than "mixing," the word we default to when speaking the language of race. In the title poem Braided Skin, the use of this terminology shifts, to entwining and crossing, holding together in a way that always displays the promise or threat of unravelling. This is just as all tellings of family, history and relationships must be -- "Skin that carries stories of missing middles.” When speaking to the issue of Racial identity Knight raises the question, then drops it, and the image becomes other objects, then abstraction, and memory -- then it finally becomes something "she breathes in" actively.