Generation 1.5

Countless Journeys

Generation 1.5 features the stories of three women who had to figure out a whole new life and a whole new identity - before they even knew who they really were. Trey Anthony burst onto the Canadian theatre scene in 2001, with her play Da Kink in My Hair. Da Kink in My Hair became the first play written by a Canadian to be performed at the Princess of Wales Theater in Toronto. It also became the first television series in Canada to be written and created by a Black woman. “I was 12 turning 13. And I think that age is difficult for anybody, much less being a child who's coming to assimilate into a new country, meeting a woman who is supposed to be her mother, who she has had no contact with - very limited contact with - for the last four years and going through puberty and changes. So it was a lot. Now that I look back on it, I realise how much was expected of me. And yet nobody really acknowledged how much change was going on in my life.” Gabriella Hong was born in Seoul, South Korea, and came to Canada when she was five. Now she lives in Ottawa, where she works in computer technology. Gabriella believes arriving at such a young age had a huge impact on her experience of immigration. She uses a software analogy to describe what she means. “It's different if you're born here. We call them the 2.0 generation. And I'm like kind of stuck in between, so, I'm the 1.5. And the students who come at a later age, the 1.0 generation.” Mimi Sheriff was born in Zimbabwe. She earned a law degree in Johannesburg, South Africa, and then moved to Canada in 2009 to pursue a masters degree in Gender Studies at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The move to Newfoundland had a profound impact on her. It really made her think differently about her core identity - about who she was. “One of the things that I think I became a lot more convicted and stronger is saying that I was African like that is something now that before I don't think that was part of my identity. I even had a little little thing on my bracelet made out of the continent of Africa. So I think I've become more African than I ever was before I came here.”