'Church Hat' brings Caribbean queerness to screen: a mother, a hat, acceptance

When a young boy sneaks into his mother's room to try on her church hats, he expects shame or punishment. Instead, he gets a conversation — one about boundaries, self-expression, and the freedom to be himself. That quiet moment is the heart of 'Church Hat,' a new seven-minute stop-motion animated film adapted from the children's book by Jamaican-born Toronto author Debra Williams.

The film took roughly a year and a half to produce and features Jamaican-born actor Sheryl Lee Ralph as the voice of the boy's mother. Williams drew inspiration from her own Jamaican family history: the maternal figure is based on her mother and maternal grandmother; the boy is inspired by her uncle, a gay man who grew up in a home where he did not have to hide, code-switch, or make himself smaller to accommodate others.

"My uncle very early on exhibited a sort of genderless quality, where he was very flamboyant in his dress, and it was just very obvious that he had his own unique style, and he wasn't forced to shove that back into a category that made other people comfortable," Williams said. "He did not have to hide. He did not have to other himself. He did not have to mask who he was."

Williams' mother and grandmother created such spaces both in Jamaica and later in Canada — homes where everyone had the opportunity to be themselves. In the film, when the mother catches her son trying on her carefully kept church hats (reserved for special occasions, not toys), she doesn't punish him for exploring. Instead, she reframes the infraction: the offence is that he put on her hat, not that he is asking questions about his identity. The compromise comes naturally — they will go shopping together and get him a hat of his own, customized to his taste.

'Church Hat' deliberately avoids turning a child's exploration of identity into a crisis. Instead, it centers something familiar to Caribbean households: a child playing with something that belongs to an adult. The film screens September 9 as part of the CaribbeanTales Film Festival "We Reach!" programming in Toronto.