How Elamin Abdelmahmoud found home 'elsewhere' as newcomer to Canada

Immigrating is an experience that many in Canada know first-hand. It's a journey often filled with sacrifice, hope and uncertainty. And for children who find themselves in a new country, facing a new culture, there's the added layer of figuring out who they are.

For Elamin Abdelmahmoud, it meant questioning everything he knew about himself. 

In his new book, Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces, co-host of CBC Radio's Pop Chat podcast reflects on his coming of age story — as a 12-year-old emigrating from Khartoum, Sudan, with his family and settling in Kingston, Ont.

"I think elsewhere, for me, is a concept that I wanted to explore with tenderness, and hopefully, with some kind of ability to pass this on and say, 'I don't know if this works for you, but hopefully, it's language that makes you feel seen,'" Abdelmahmoud told The Sunday Magazine's Piya Chattopadhyay.

The collection of essays explores racial identity, the lasting toll of colonialism, religion and the impact of pop culture.

Abdelmahmoud spoke with Chattopadhyay about the things that helped him carve out an identity and find community as a newcomer to Canada. Here is part of their conversation.

You're 12 years old when you and your parents immigrate to Canada, from Sudan. And as you pass through customs, you have this realization that you describe as being assigned a new identity, one that you didn't know you had, so to speak. What happened?

I grew up around people who share the same skin colour as me; I basically never had to think about my skin colour. And then I show up here, and I'm handed a new identity. And that is, as it turns out, blackness. I'm Black in Canada. I was never Black my whole life growing up in Sudan. And so suddenly, there was this idea of, "Oh, I have to have a different relationship to myself," because there is a history here, there is a cultural residue that is blackness that I had to get caught up on, and have to understand what it means to be Black in a place like Canada at the age of 12.

In Sudan, there's a really strong history of shadeism. People who are darker skinned are regularly referred to with these derogatory names. And so when I was told that I was Black, I thought that's what they meant. And having moved to Kingston — a town that I love, but also does not have a lot of examples of visible blackness — it meant having to gravitate to pop culture to figure out examples of blackness I can attach myself to. And in the year 2000, that was Ja Rule. That was meant to be my compass to blackness. And I said, "No, that is not for me." 

The title of your book is Son of Elsewhere and elsewhere sounds like an in-between space, it is meant to be temporary, a place that isn't super comfortable that you're trying to get out of, not live in. And yet, I get the sense that you have found home in elsewhere.

This book is about an attempt to find and basically live in elsewhere, because it's feeling like here is not quite it. There's something that's just a little bit off in terms of embodying myself as fully Canadian. I have lived in this country now for 22 years; I have no intentions of leaving it. For me, this is home. But also, I would like some kind of way to note that a part of me doesn't come from here. By the same token, when I tried to fully inhabit my Sudanese identity that didn't feel quite right, either. 

This tends to be a discomfort that people move through relatively fast. And this book is maybe an invitation to say this in-between place is actually the identity that you're meant to orient yourself towards. It's an attempt to not run away from the in-between.

Here you are, a new kid in a new culture, you don't really speak very much English. And you have to figure out a way to get friends. You really leaned on pop culture and within that you really leaned on wrestling.

OK, so here's the thing about wrestling: it was something that was shared between Sudan and Canada. There was also wrestling sometimes on TV in Sudan. It became something that was like, "Oh, that's familiar enough. I know what that is."

The nice thing about wrestling is that it really doesn't ask a lot of you. As you're watching, the crowd will boo for the bad guy. They will cheer for the good guy. You barely need to understand the smack talk that's going back and forth.

I said, "That's my ticket. I'm going to start watching more wrestling and try to talk to people about wrestling." So the first few friends I made were wrestling fans, friends that would come over and watch WrestleMania 17 with Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock.

Your family did find community through your faith at a local mosque and you write that it gave you a respite from what you refer to as performing in other aspects of your daily life in Canada. What do you mean by that?

The mosque is a safe space in so many ways. It's a space where you don't have to do the translation work. Everyone who was at the mosque, or most people who were at the mosque, were in some ways aware of the fact that their identity straddled a bunch of different lines. And they could just put that aside at the mosque. 

We didn't have to think about the places we were from, and the places that we came to, and which one we really belong to more than the other. We could just be.

As you're on this continuous journey to figuring out your space of belonging, your parents are navigating it, too. You talk about the objections of your parents to your relationship [at the time] with your now wife. How have you processed that part of your familial history?

I would say that there was a long period of time where I tried to collapse my parents' complex inner lives into a pretty simple identity of the "immigrant parent." And it's a trope that we all have in our minds. It's a strict parent, who is resistant to the new ways of the new land. 

Part of writing this book has been trying to unpack that identity of immigrant parents and think about the conditions that create them. Some of those are racism and capitalism. My parents have faced a great deal of discrimination in this country, but they've persevered through it in ways that I've really admired. But it's also meant that they might have some natural suspicions. That, of course, has shaped their perspective and their relationship to my relationships.

I think my parents and I are now in a place where the ways that we express love to one another has changed. They say "I love you" and they didn't used to do that and I'm really appreciative of it. 

So the book is a recognition that they've come to meet me where I am, and I have to spend more time trying to meet them where they are.

Written and produced by Samraweet Yohannes. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.