Antonio Michael Downing is the author of the acclaimed memoir Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming (shortlisted for the 2021 Speaker’s Book Award and longlisted for the Toronto Book Award), and the children’s picture book, Stars in My Crown. He writes and performs music as John Orpheus. Downing is the current host of CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter, where he discusses books with authors and columnists. Black Cherokee is his first novel.
“Downing’s poetic prose is mesmerizing. He takes us across counties and through communities with this story about land, love and a longing for true freedom. Black Cherokee is a journey I’m glad to have travelled on.” –Matthew R. Morris (Black Boys Like Me: Confrontations with Race, Gender, and Belonging)
Betty meets Queenie in a courageous debut novel about a mixed-race Black girl fighting for recognition in a Cherokee Indian community that refuses to accept her ancestry as legitimate.
Ophelia Blue Rivers is the specificity of her circumstance. She’s not just mixed in the American binary sense of being a racial amalgamation of two races; she’s a mix of two of the distinct racial identities that make up the politics of this continent. She’s Black and she is Native American, raised by her grandmother who is a Black descendent of Cherokee freedmen.
A history as rich as it is complicated, Cherokee freedmen were formerly enslaved Africans once owned by Cherokee elites. After Emancipation as well as the Trail of Tears, these former slaves were freed but their belonging to the Cherokee nation remained a point of controversy. Can people who once belonged to another people who were displaced claim birthright to that heritage?
An ageless story of self-discovery set in contemporary 1990s South Carolina, Antonio Michael Downing uses Ophelia’s search for home and family to dramatize what it means to belong to a people when the terms of that belonging come at such a high price. As she finds her way, ghosts return, patterns repeat, myths become reality, and the lush southern landscape flows on like time itself.
Raised by his indomitable grandmother in the lush rainforest of southern Trinidad, Antonio Michael Downing, at age 11, is uprooted to Canada when she dies. He and his older brother are sent to live with his stern, evangelical Aunt Joan, in a tiny northern Ontario community where they are the only Black children in the town. In this wilderness, after a disappointing reunion with his birth parents, he begins his journey as an immigrant minority, using music and performance to dramatically transform himself.
He tries to flee his messy family life by morphing into a series of extravagant musical personalities: “Mic Dainjah,” a punk rock rapper, “Molasses,” a soul music crooner and finally “John Orpheus,” a gold chained, sequin- and leather-clad pop star. Yet, like his father and grandfather, he has become a “Saga Boy,” a Trinidadian playboy, addicted to escapism, attention, and sex. When the inevitable crash happens, he finds himself in a cold, stone jail cell, having become everything he was trying to escape. At the heart of his odyssey is the longing for a home. Richly evocative, Saga Boy is a heart-wrenching but uplifting story of a lonely immigrant boy who overcomes adversity and abandonment to reclaim his Black identity and embrace a rich heritage.
Little Tony is full of love for his grandmother, his home in Trinidad and delicious pholourie. But he’s also full of other big feelings, including anger. His grandmother tries to teach him to be patient—patience is a star in his crown, she says—but it’s hard.
He tries to keep his anger in, but when he loses at ping-pong to his brother or he has to come in from playing . . . Yaaarrgh!
When Little Tony and his brother move away from their beloved Trinidad, there’s even more for him to be upset about. His new home is cold, full of new people, and there’s no pholourie anywhere! Yaaarrgh!
But then he remembers his grandmother’s lessons, and a surprising thing happens . . .
A charming and heartwarming story based on the author’s own childhood, Stars in My Crown is an ode to big feelings but even bigger triumphs.
Starring Antonio Michael Downing, Ben Ladouceur, Neil Smith & Madeleine Thien. Co-Hosted by Kris Demeanor & Deborah Willis
Starring Antonio Michael Downing & Shelagh Rogers
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
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