Makeda Silvera

Makeda Silvera (/may-kduh sil-ver-uh/; born in 1955) is a Jamaican Canadian novelist and short story writer.

Early life Silvera was born in Kingston, Jamaica. Her family immigrated to Toronto when she was 12 years old. Silvera grew up in a strict Caribbean family and was not allowed to socialize with the other children outside her home. This allowed Silvera to develop a strong love of reading. When she did socialize it was during family gatherings and extra-curricular activities centered around her family. Silvera has briefly talked about seeing “many faces of motherhood” and dealing with an “absentee mother”.

Career As a teenager, Silvera did community work. Her first job was at Toronto’s Contrast, where she was a typesetter. At the time the only job available to women at the newspaper was to be a typesetter. She worked her way up to the news and started covering domestic workers. Eventually her editor said she needed to change her focus because she could no longer write about domestic workers without a clear objective. She left the newspaper after that discussion. This was not because she was mad but because she agreed. Silvera needed a fresh start which she found at Share Magazine, where was an assistant editor and wrote a column called Women’s Lips. Women’s Lips played into the stereotypes of the owner of Share. Silvera had continued writing about domestic workers which inspired her first book, Silenced: Talks with Working Class West Indian Women about Their Lives and Struggle, which was about black domestic workers in Canada. She continued doing community work throughout her professional career and worked at a summer program pertaining to black education. In 1983 Silvera started working at Fireweed, which was a feminist periodical in Canada, that was founded in 1978 and published women’s writings about art, politics, and culture. Silvera was the only black woman working at Fireweed. Issue 16 was the first issue that focused on women of color. She stayed a number of years to hone her skills. While working at Fireweed, she also worked a hotline for black youth and volunteered at the first Immigrant Women Center. In 1983, Silvera was invited to the first Women and Word’s Conference in Vancouver as one of the four keynote speakers. During the conference she was supposed to speak about how far women writers have come and Silvera talked about how they have not come very far, especially black women writers. She overheard a well-established white woman writer saying that black women should start their own presses and journals and stop complaining. When she returned to Toronto she started preparations to create and found Sister Vision. Despite Silvera referring to herself and Martin as “crazy,” since they had very little knowledge about publishing and were both working full-time jobs, they were able to make small successes and outgrew their office space at Fireweed. They moved Sister Vision into the basement of their home, 101 Dewson Street, in Toronto. Silvera eventually quit her job at Fireweed and dedicated her time to working to co-found the 101 Dewson Street Collective House and Sister Vision Press. They held Sister Vision’s first book launch party in their living room and their house started to double as a Black queer activist collective. The first book published was called Speshal Rikwes. Silvera and Martin wanted to start with a book that would prove their intention to publish writers in their native language. she wrote many queer-focused material, including Piece of My Heart (1991), the first North American anthology of literature by lesbians of colour. Silvera published her first collection of short stories, Piece of My Heart, with Sister Vision in 1991. After this publication she decided that if she wrote a work of fiction she would want to publish it elsewhere. When she wrote Her Head a Village she decided to publish it with Press Gang in 1994. Silvera stated that it is very challenging to publish your own work and self-promote the book. Therefore, she wanted to be looked after and experience the challenge that comes with a publishing house editing and promoting your work. Unfortunately, Press Gang went under so Silvera offered her novel The Heart Does Not Bend to Random House in 2002 and they enjoyed the story and wanted to publish it.

Personal life She currently lives in Toronto. Piece of My Heart: A Lesbian of Color Anthology was also named a Gay and Lesbian Book Awards Finalist in 1992. In 2003, Silvera’s novel The Heart Will Not Bend was named a finalist for the Toronto Book Awards.