On Being Elsewhere:

Literature Alive Storyteller Tessa McWatt

By Shana L. Calixte and Tumelo E. Phali | Posted: October 16, 2005

Like many Caribbean-born transplants to Canada, Tessa McWatt doesn't necessarily find herself easily 'placed'.

As she shared with NOW reporter Susan Cole in 1998,

"I'm living out of a suitcase in my mother's house... I've left and come back from friends and families for 10 years. I feel like I belong elsewhere."

Her migration story may hold a clue to that statement. Born in the 1950s in Georgetown, Guyana, McWatt migrated to Canada with her family when she was only three years old. She grew up in Toronto where she sang professionally and played the cello. As an adult, McWatt moved to Montreal where she taught and worked as an editor for several years while she fashioned her craft towards becoming a writer. She now divides her life between London, England and Toronto, and she continues to write and to work as a teacher of creative writing and post colonial literature.

Perhaps the concept of 'not belonging' is best illustrated through McWatt's work. Her writing brings to life the diverse reality of a Caribbean ancestry – with all the various racial and ethnic strains that can often be traced within so many people of the Caribbean. Like other writers of Caribbean heritage, McWatt explores all kinds of different issues that are generally related to post-colonial matters, identity, migration and movement. Her themes are typically described as addressing “the difficulty of belonging in national, familial, and personal terms.”

McWatt’s first novel, Out Of My Skin , published in 1998 by Cormorant Books was well received. Her second, Dragon’s Cry has been called a lyrical evocation of history. It was released through Riverbank Press in 2000 and was short-listed for the City of Toronto Book Award and Governor General’s Award in 2001.

In her 2004 novella, we see that McWatt avoids naming a rooted space as 'home' or as somehere to 'belong'. She gives this book the tiltle There's no Place Like... and brings us the story of a young girl on a trip around the world. Written for young adults, the protagonist Beatrice finds herself moving from place to place, from Guyana to Miami, Mexico City, Beijing and Delhi. The story suggests that you can truly find friendship and familiarity even as you elude the end of that familiar and oft repeated cliché.

“What I'm searching for is a way to find cultural richness where we live,” says McWatt in a 1998 interview.

Her most recent novel captures the dilemma inherent in such a search. This Body (2004), written shortly after she arrived in London, is a tale about a chef and her young nephew who leave Guyana and migrate to London. It is a multitextual piece (containing Internet sites, recipes, and letters). The various documents in the novel bring to life a vivid, historical narrative of each character that uncovers many long lost secrets in their past.

McWatt has published several short stories and poems that have been printed in various journals in Canada and England. Like other writers, her achievements go beyond her literary work. She is also a screenwriter and she has produced and edited a film adaptation of the novel, To The Weddingby John Berger, the London-born novelist, painter, and art historian.

The clips included in this article are from the Literature Alive documentary Home, in which we join Mcwatt on a musical journey from her current home in Britain to visit with her family in Toronto. In it she shares with us her life and work, her past and current passions, and her evolving understanding of the concepts of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’.

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