How To Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir

(Hardback)

Available Formats

---

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

There was more than one way to be lost, more than one way to be saved.
Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, where luxury hotels line pristine white sand beaches, Safiya Sinclair grew up guarding herself against an ever-present threat. Preaching fire and brimstone, her father, a volatile reggae musician and strict believer in a militant sect of Rastafari, railed against Babylon, the immoral, corrupting influence of the Western world just beyond their gate. To protect the purity of the women in their family he forbade almost everything: no trousers, no short sleeves and no short skirts, no opinions, nowhere but home and school, no friends but this family and no future but this path.

Rastas were outlawed and ostracized in Jamaica and, in this isolation, Safiyas fathers rule was absolute. At home, her mother did what she could to bring the joy of the world beyond to her children with books and poetry. As Safiyas imagination leapt beyond its restrictive borders, soon her burgeoning independence brought with it greater clashes with her ever more radicalised father. Safiya knew that if she was to live at all, she had to find some way to leave home. But in order to carve her own way forward, she had to first make her way back.

In seeking out the past of her family Safiya Sinclair takes readers inside the world of Rastafari that is little understood by those outside it and delivers an astonishing, personal reckoning with family, history and the legacy of empire. A lyrical memoir of devastating emotional power, How to Say Babylon is a testament to the forces of hope, intellect and imagination that light up every page.

From the material of history and mythology, both personal and political, Safiya Sinclair has gorgeously and lovingly assembled a story with radiant transformative power. I couldnt put it down Nadia Owusu, author of Aftershocks

'Her language is distinctive, assured, and a marvel to read' Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings

Reviews

Praise for How to Say Babylon:

A poet's memoir, a daughters lyric, a love letter, a rebellion, and an incantation. From the material of history and mythology, both personal and political, Safiya Sinclair has gorgeously and lovingly assembled a story with radiant transformative power. I couldnt put it down Nadia Osuwu, author of Aftershocks

Some memoirs grab you by the throat with their truth-is-stranger-than-fiction storylines. Some mesmerize with the power and beauty of the writing. Every once in a while, a book comes along that does both Both beautifully rendered and an incredible story, How to Say Babylon is a tour de force Natasha Trethewey, author of Memorial Drive: A Daughters Memoir

In this lyrical, startling, and magnetic memoir about growing up Rastafari, [Sinclair] weaves a story rich in unsettling visions that goad and haunt while waves crest and soar in the background Her words sparkle like silver or pour like lava Jabari Asim, author of Yonder

Praise for Safiya Sinclair:

'Her language is distinctive, assured, and a marvel to read' Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings

Safiya Sinclair is offering us a new muscular music that is as brutal as it is beautiful A poet who is dangerously talented and desperately needed Ada Limn, Poet Laureate of the United States

She laces words together in a beautiful tapestry, full of history, life, death and, most of all, renewal Morgan Jenkins, New York Times

Dazzling Her poems shimmer with the rich colours and sounds of her homeland, but running through is a sense of escape and of exile Daily Mail

Precise and provocative Sinclair writes with a thrilling sensibility of the texture of savageness New Statesman

Author Bio

Safiya Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of the poetry collection Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Writers Award, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Cannibal was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award, as well as being longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. Sinclairs other honours include a Pushcart Prize, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Nation, and elsewhere. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Literary Arts Department at Brown University.