How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair

The stunning story of the author's struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her Dad's strict patriarchal views & repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman & poet.
Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair's father, a volatile reggae musician & militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed w/ her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral & corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya & her sisters morally weak & impure, & believed a woman's highest virtue was her obedience.

In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts & dresses to cover their arms & legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya & her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. & as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework & the rigidity of her Dad’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice & break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes w/ her father, whose rage & paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically & poetically, a collision course is set between them.

This is Sinclair’s reckoning w/ the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning w/ patriarchy & tradition, & the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism & language only a poet could evoke, it's a universal story of a woman finding her own power & a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.

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