Dear Current Occupant

A Memoir

Chelene Knight

• Publisher: BookThug
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781771663908
• eBook ISBN: 9781771663915
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Winner of the 2018 City of 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 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.

Table of contents

• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• 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
• Dear Current Occupant—House with the sign in the window
• Dear Current Occupant—Origami house with the handmade roof
• Dear Current Occupant—Duplex near Fraser Street with the picture books in the closet
• Dear Current Occupant—Letter to Santa
• Dear Current Occupant—House with the green door on East 12th Avenue
• Dear Current Occupant—Basement suite on Earles Street
• Dear Current Occupant—Apartment above the East Indian sweet shop just off 49th
• Dear Current Occupant—Palms Motel, Kingsway
• Dear Current Occupant—House we all shared on Forgotten Street
• Dear Current Occupant—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
• Dear Current Occupant: Part Two
• Dear Current Occupant—She’s at the recovery house for the third time,
• Dear Current Occupant—Apartment on Clark Drive above the convenience store,
• Dear Current Occupant—For Uncle Eugene
• Dear Current Occupant—Owl House Women and Children’s Shelter,
• Dear Current Occupant—The room in the attic of the oldest place we’ve stayed
• Dear Current Occupant—Pink building, Broadway and 12th,
• Dear Current Occupant—House with the attic apartment where kittens disappear,
• Dear Current Occupant—Neighbour, this is for your daughter,
• Dear Current Occupant—One-room apartment above the grocery store,
• Dear Current Occupant—Third-floor corner unit apartment, East Broadway,
• Dear Current Occupant—House where I accidentally dyed my hair blond,
• Dear Current Occupant—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