Chelene Knight reimagines Vancouver's historic Black neighbourhood Hogan's Alley in debut novel
'I really wanted to showcase that joy can live inside even the most tumultuous times'
Fifty years ago, Vancouver's Black community made its home in a downtown neighbourhood known as Hogan's Alley, an area where railway porters, immigrants from the U.S., and many others came together in what was still a segregated city.
While the area was demolished by the city in the 1970s to make way for the Georgia Viaduct, it remained alive in the consciousness of the Black community in Vancouver for decades afterwards.
When B.C. writer Chelene Knight first heard about this once-vibrant neighbourhood, she knew she'd found the setting for her first novel, Junie — named for the protagonist she had been thinking about for many years before even putting her onto the page.
Set in the 1930s, when the area was thriving, the novel is the coming-of-age story of Junie, a creative, observant child who moves to the neighbourhood with her mother Maddie, a jazz singer with a drinking problem. Their complex relationship over the years echoes the evolution of Hogan's Alley itself — a timely exploration, given the announcement in September that the City of Vancouver has reached an agreement to develop a cultural centre and housing for the Black community at the site after years of calls to redress the displacement.
The Vancouver-born Knight is also the author of the poetry collection Braided Skin and the memoir Dear Current Occupant, which won the 2018 Vancouver Book Award. She also works as a literary agent and is the founder of literary studio Breathing Space Creative, which supports emerging writers.
Knight spoke with CBC Books about bringing a long-imagined character to life — and revisiting the heyday of Hogan's Alley — in Junie.
Centring Black joy
"I think I had the character of Junie in my head my whole life. For the actual book, it came from learning about Hogan's Alley over a decade ago. One of my mentors, I heard him talking about this Black immigrant community, and I thought, 'I've lived in Vancouver my whole life, born and raised in the city, and I've never heard of this community. That's not okay.'
"I initially wanted to explore the whole history, and I wanted to have the destruction take place in the book — but I pulled back and said, 'Well, what am I trying to highlight here?' For me, I wanted to showcase the heyday of that neighbourhood. I wanted to put all these different spotlights on that particular time when the neighbourhood was thriving — when the community was coming together, and especially when the women in the community were really coming into themselves.
I wanted to showcase that joy can live inside even the most tumultuous times.
"When we do the research, we always see the same things popping up: that the neighbourhood itself was in squalor, that it was a community riddled with crime, that there were all these terrible things happening. But we weren't really looking at the community; we weren't really looking at people. We weren't looking at the fact that their neighbourhood had these Black-owned businesses. We weren't looking at the conversations and the everyday living. So that's what I wanted to highlight.
"This conversation around Black voice becomes really important, because we're often centring stories around pain, heartache and trauma. I wanted to showcase that joy can live inside even the most tumultuous times."
Interwoven threads
"I was dipping into those memory archives [from previously writing a memoir], for sure — not specifically the happenings of my own life, but more around this idea of distance. Because I was also writing another book at the same time, a nonfiction book on Black self-love and joy, I started to think about how there are always these themes and threads that are connected.
I'm the kind of writer that is trying different things to figure out what the best vessel is for my voice.
"Having the foundation of poetry really allowed me to dip my toes into all these different waters. I'm the kind of writer that is trying different things to figure out what the best vessel is for my voice. And for me, it's really hard to tell, because I think when people read my writing and say, 'Oh, it sounds like someone different when I read your poetry' — compared to, say, the narrative nonfiction — I think that's the biggest compliment, because all of these things are connected.
"I like the idea of having two different projects in two different phases. Working on the novel, I was in revision mode. And working on the narrative nonfiction book, I was in draft mode. So I had to find a common connector, and that was the idea of love in both books. And so that allowed me to write them both at the same time, but also keep them separate."
Structure and flow
"Junie's mother Maddie's backwards slide is predicting and hinting at the eventual demise of the neighbourhood. And that's why Junie is so in tune with what's going to happen in the future, because she can already see it with her mother. I'm someone who needs to know what the shape or movement of a book is going to be before I can fully commit to it. And so writing it in this chronological way didn't really make sense for me.
I hope that the structure of the narrative also encourages readers to slow down and pay attention to what's happening around them as well.
"So when I thought about the shape and structure, I needed to have moments where we stop and slow down. I hope that it also encourages readers to slow down and pay attention to what's happening around them as well. But then I feel like the shape of the book has less of a container and more of a movement.
"I picture opening a faucet, and the water gushes out quickly. And as the book moves along, somebody is closing that tap and the water slowly stalls — but when you think about it, those drops have just as much value as the gushing water. At the bottom of that tap, all of those drops will collect and create this community. How can a community be built from these small drops? The book essentially answers that in the end through the shape — it is my hope that the right people will see that."
Listen | Chelene Knight on CBC Radio's The Next Chapter:
Distinct perspective
"I think I have one of the most unique vantage points in that as a writer, I'm deep inside the elements of craft. And then as an agent, I have one foot in the world where we can see how books go from an idea to a published thing on the shelf. And I get to see all of that from all these different angles.
"People always ask me, 'What do you do for a living?' That's hard to answer, but now I have this really clear way of explaining it. And I say, 'Well, I help writers write in a healthy way forever.' And that kind of sums up the work that I do as a whole."
Chelene Knight's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
For more about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out CBC's Being Black in Canada. You can read more stories here.
