POV: A Mother Apart
Courtesy of National Film Board of Canada/POV
Staceyann picks up her daughter Zuri from school, where she is empowered to write a poem about her hair.
By Jennifer Robinson | Thursday, 9 October 2025
Premieres Monday, Oct.13, 2025 at 11 p.m. / Stream with KPBS+
POV presents "A Mother Apart," a film that follows mother Staceyann Chin, who balances the struggle of being abandoned at a young age by her mother, and as a mother who is trying to change her family’s generational cycle of abandonment. The film celebrates Staceyann Chin's healing journey of becoming the mother she always needed, revealing that compassion and grace are possible—even when the past is marked by loss.
"A Mother Apart" centers on Staceyann Chin, a woman who embodies multiple complex identities—poet, activist, lesbian, Jamaican American, mother. But the most complicated of all is “daughter.”
Abandoned by her mother as a child, Staceyann has been seeking her out for decades, travelling the globe in a one-sided attempt to forge a meaningful bond with the woman who brought her into the world. Now, as the sole parent of nine-year-old Zuri, she wrestles with an all-consuming dilemma: how to mother a daughter when your own mother has been largely absent.
With key themes of forgiveness and grace, filmmaker Laurie Townshend profiles one woman’s inspired and deeply intentional parenting. "A Mother Apart" catches up with Staceyann as she picks up the trail of her elusive mother—a trail that leads to Brooklyn, Montreal, Germany, and, finally, back to her native Jamaica.
A healing journey spanning three generations, the film is punctuated with vivid animation, imagery from personal archives, and excerpts from Staceyann’s arresting live performances. Her singularly intersectional voice infuses "A Mother Apart" with deep compassion and commanding intelligence.
