by Rosemary Brown
The further I delved into Tessa McWatt’s Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging, the more absorbed I became. McWatt’s fluid and poetic writing style draws one in, and the structure of the book is intriguing.
McWatt was born in British Guyana, emigrated to Canada when she was a child, and in later years moved to England where she teaches creative writing at the University of East Anglia. She is a prolific writer.
Shame on Me, published in 2019, is a memoir. It recounts experiences from McWatt’s childhood, youth, and adult years, and chronicles her search for what she is in the world, as well as where she belongs. This search was inspired by her multiracial heritage and the question she was posed as a young child in Canada: “What are you?” These led to many interesting philosophical musings on identity and identification. McWatt makes herself very vulnerable to her readers, but as she has stated in interviews, she felt she needed to move beyond addressing these issues through the characters of her novels and to put herself on the page, a need prompted by increasing racial violence in the world.
Her experience as a person of mixed racial heritage is organized within the framework of the human anatomy: nose, lips, eyes, skin, ass, bone, and blood. Interspersed with her personal stories, which shift in time and space, are discussions around the function of various body parts—functions which are shared by all of us regardless of racial heritage.
She describes the work of several European scientists who classified human beings on the basis of these anatomical details, all of whose projects centred Caucasians as superior and othered people from different racial backgrounds.
McWatt undertook family history research, including visits to parts of the world she thinks her ancestors came from. She also underwent Jungian psychoanalysis and took two different DNA tests as part of her journey to find herself. The DNA testing, which basically confirmed what she suspected about her heritage, also led her to ponder the mystery of common ancestors thousands of years ago, as well as the continual movement of human populations in the far past.
The insights she gained from all aspects of her search, especially Jungian psychoanalysis, led her to an understanding that it is not what she is but who she is that counts. It’s about who she is in the world in relationship to other people and the natural world around her. She moves beyond the need to be in one particular place or social location, and to realize that she is everywhere.
Along with this shift in thinking is an increasing awareness of the need for social activism to address inequities wherever they may exist. She sees intersectional approaches as the only way forward. She also addresses the fact that many identities are also mediated by class. For her, the new “plantation slave owners” are the one percent who control most of the world’s wealth and resources.
Shame On Me is rich in such observations. Not all have been touched on in this review so I strongly encourage folks to read this latest book selection from the Settlers Book Club.
