The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir

Staceyann Chin has appeared on television and radio, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, and PBS, discussing issues of race and sexuality. But it is her extraordinary voice that launched her career as a performer, poet, and activist. Here, she shares her unforgettable story of triumph against all odds in this brave and fiercely candid memoir. No one knew Staceyann's mother was pregnant until a dangerously small baby was born on the floor of her grandmother's house in Jamaica, on Christmas Day. Staceyann's mother did not want her, and her father was not present. No one, except her grandmother, thought Staceyann would survive. It was her grandmother who nurtured and protected and provided for Staceyann and her older brother in the early years. But when the three were separated, Staceyann was thrust, alone, into an unfamiliar and dysfunctional home in Paradise, Jamaica. Told with grace, humor, and courage, Chin plumbs tender and unsettling memories as she writes about drifting from one home to the next, coming out as a lesbian, finding the man she believes to be her father, and ultimately, discovering her voice.

Staceyann Chin is a fulltime artist. A resident of New York City and a Jamaican National, she has been an ?out poet and political activist? since 1998. From the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe to one-woman shows Off- Broadway to?acting in Julie Taymor?s"Across the Universe" and performing in both the stage and film versions of Howard Zinn's "Voices of a People's History of the -->-->United States-->-->, "to starring in the Tony nominated, "Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam" on Broadway, Chin credits the long list of "things she has done" to her grandmother's hard-working history and the pain of her mother'

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