How To Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir

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Dazzling. Potent. Vital Tara Westover, author of Educated

To read it is to believe that words can save Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings

One of the most gut-wrenching, soul-stirring, electrifying memoirs I've ever read Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun
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.

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

A narrative marvel To read it is to believe that words can save, words can heal, and words can imbue us with near divine power Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings

One of the most gut-wrenching, soul-stirring, electrifying memoirs I've ever read. It shatters every perception we have about Rastafari and lays bare our post-colonial wounds as Jamaicans with lyrical power, unflinching truth, and grace. A necessary testament filled with rich, poetic detail that haunts and dazzles Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun

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

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

Safiya Sinclair possesses a rare gift: her prose is gorgeous and lush Every sentence sings Simply stunning Imani Perry, author of South to America

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 Beautifully rendered and an incredible story, How to Say Babylon is a tour de force Natasha Trethewey, author of Memorial Drive: A Daughters Memoir

Lyrical, startling, and magnetic Her words sparkle like silver or pour like lava Jabari Asim, author of Yonder

In dazzling prose [Sinclair] examines the traumas of her childhood against the backdrop of her new life as a poet in Babylon . This is a tour de force Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Safiya Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Writers Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Metcalf Award in Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Cannibal was selected as one of the American Library Associations Notable Books of the Year, was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Seamus Heaney First Book Award in the UK, and was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Nation, Poetry and elsewhere. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Arizona State University.