Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Turner immigrated to Canada when she was nine, first to Sarnia, and then Hamilton, Ontario. Her childhood experience of living in Canada was marked by a feeling of otherness; other children's racial taunts created a sense that she didn't belong. Turner has said, "no matter how long I live in Canada, no matter that I've lived here most of my life, when will I ever be Canadian? The feeling of otherness is so common." Simultaneously, Canada was the place where she and her mother and sister became reunited with her father, a boilermaker who made his living working in Hamilton's steel industry. Turner notes, "for me, my father was always somewhere else. And so home was always this mythical place that was going to happen when he would get settled. Then he would send for us, and we would be a family together. That's why a lot of the work that I do is about belonging and home, because it has always been this thing that was out there."
