Tiara Jade Chutkhan – Diving deep into her historical background

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

“Why do you look Indian then?” “You’re not black” I hated comments like these…”

What I most enjoy about featuring our Woman Empowered this week is the fact that she is a young, inspiring writer who seems to have quickly found her place in the literary arts.

She sent me an email sharing with me, one of her proudest achievements; a book that she had published, “Two Times Removed: An Anthology of Indo-Caribbean Fiction,” and like many authors who share their books with me, I posted it on Toronto Caribbean Newspaper social media. We enjoy supporting the written arts, especially coming out of the Caribbean.

Well, I logged back into our social media pages, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the post on her book had been liked, and shared multiple times. I sat back, and took in what I was seeing. The community had spoken. Through their actions, the community selected exactly whom they wanted to read about, so I willingly obliged…

I would like to re-introduce to the Caribbean diaspora, the talented, tenacious Tiara Jade Chutkhan.

As a young child, Tiara Jade never questioned her cultural background. Her mom was from Trinidad, and her dad was from Guyana. Ultimately, she knew she was Caribbean. She enjoyed Soca and Reggae, roti and curry, you know, the mainstays of Caribbean culture. It was as simple as that; she never looked at herself as anything other than what she was.

Tiara Jade Chutkhan is a book blogger, writer and editor. Her love of literature led her to begin blogging and sharing her reads in 2019. Her blogging opened the door to reviewing books for HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster and Dundurn Press.

Following the release of her first book, “Two Times Removed: An Anthology of Indo-Caribbean Fiction,” she had the opportunity to speak on “All in a Weekend,” (CBC Radio) and “In Town and Out,” (CBC Radio). It doesn’t stop there for this young powerhouse; in October 2021, she was featured on the debut episode of CBC’s “Rediscovering Culture” series.

Her work has been published in the Caribbean Camera, Brown Gyal Diary, Write Magazine, Caribbean Collective Magazine, and Brown Girl Magazine.

The question I ended up dreading the most – “What are you?”

“I always loved my culture as a whole, and I did my best to explain to kids that there were different types of people from the Caribbean. To be fair, besides my family, there were not a lot of Indo-Caribbean families in the Don Mills area, and there was not a lot of cultural diversity. People didn’t know what Indo-Caribbean meant. 

All of my explanations would usually be countered with, “But you still look Indian.” It felt like no matter what, my heritage was never recognized. Someone would always downplay it, and force me into a cultural box, so that it would make sense to them.”

“Brown is like Indian… So you’re basically black,” a classmate had said to her in high school, and it is comments like this that lit a fire under Tiara. She started digging into (his/her) story, but before the dig happened, a young writer had been developing, not knowing exactly where it was going to take her…

“When I was a kid, I loved coming up with stories. I would make little books, staple papers together,” Tiara chuckles. “I started experimenting more in high school. I went as far as to take a creative writing course; for me writing was always very personal.”

Tiara went to Centennial College for journalism, and she quickly discovered that it was a different form of writing.

“News writing was not creative. I enjoyed journalism, but I didn’t like the lack of freedom. There was a structured way of doing things, and this did not work for me. I liked doing human-interest stories, but I did not connect to the other aspects of journalism.

I wanted more freedom, and in the journalism program I knew I wouldn’t get it, so I left. There was very little cultural sensitivity, even though there were students in the class that were people of colour. Like I said, I could not connect.”

In early 2020 the pandemic hit, and magically things started happening for Tiara.

“I got involved in the Brown Gyal Diaries. I started writing pieces for them, and then became Editor in Chief.  This is when I started to deep dive into my historical journey. I had to dig backwards to figure out how to navigate the future.”

The pandemic gave Tiara the time to develop herself.

“I began reading a lot, and two very impactful books that I read were short stories: Trinidadian Noires, and Jahaji. I thought they were great books, but they were missing a modern voice. The writers were from my grandparent’s generation, and our parent’s generation. I started thinking about my own generation living in the diaspora, and I didn’t see a voice that represented us.”

She met a group of writers who were all on the same journey, and Tiara was drawn to their work.

“My next thought was, what if we put our work together, looking at our life?  I put out a more formal call for submissions in July of 2020, and that is when the book was born. The first book came out in May in 2021. The reaction was more than I expected. So many of us were looking into our pasts, figuring out our identities. People really enjoyed it, and found themselves represented. People were calling it, Chicken Book for the Soul, the Indo-Caribbean version.”

It seemed like the more research she did, the more that she was able to put the pieces together for herself, and other members of the Indo-Caribbean Community.

“I want young people to have an understanding of their Indo-Caribbean heritage, and hopefully avoid the identity crisis that plagued me for so many years. It is why I had to put together the second book, “Two Times Removed Volume II: Indo-Caribbean Stories of Love, Resilience and Exploration.”

Tiara admits that while she is still exploring what it means to be Indo-Caribbean, she is able to find solace and pride in knowing that her roots are rich with (her/his) story.