Book Review HOW TO SAY BABYLON Safiya Sinclair

Thank you to the author Safiya Sinclair, publishers 37Ink, and TLC Book Tours, for an advance paperback copy of ʜᴏᴡ ᴛᴏ sᴀʏ ʙᴀʙʏʟᴏɴ. Thank you also to NetGalley for an accomanying widget. All views are mine.

ʜᴏᴡ ᴛᴏ sᴀʏ ʙᴀʙʏʟᴏɴ is a stunning memoir in which the author tells of her upbringing that was all the things we should never think of when we think of family. Religious abuse.  Cruel beatings. Going hungry. And yet, Safiya kept the spark inside her alive, not just to survive her young life, but to become a creative writer-- to gain the voice she'd always been denied. It's a moving book, full of pain and meaning.

Three (or more) things I loved:

1. I love all the details about the Rastafari way of life. I especially appreciate the information that "Rasta is not a religion..." [My] father always says, echoing the edict he drilled into me and my siblings growing up. “Rasta is a calling. A way of life.” There is no united doctrine, no holy book to learn the principles of Rastafari, there was only the wisdom passed down from the mouths of elder Rasta bredren, the teachings of reggae songs from conscious Rasta musicians, and the radical Pan-Africanism of revolutionaries like Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X. loc. 476

2. Some really great commentary about addiction culture in this book: We puffed and pulled, pulled and puffed. We felt grown- up blowing herb smoke out of our mouths. My mother and father were wrapped in an embrace, looking on and smiling, as luminous as they’d ever been. Our initiation into their private sect was now official. There was no turning back. My sister Ife and I often relive this moment out loud to each other to make sure we hadn’t dreamed it. We were only children then, and didn’t know what we were asking. My parents had pulled us past all reasonable boundaries and into an unknown jungle, their rules and roads growing hazier as we went. My sister and I never smoked anything after that, but the next time my brother picked up a spliff, he was never able to put it back down. loc. 1437

3. She describes religious abuse with perfect clarity. It wasn't Rastafari that harmed her so badly, it was how her father interpreted it and used his interpretation: With us at home, [my father] could still be king. All sights and sounds were his, all words were his. If he rose blissfully, all of us were to be blissful, too, no matter our feelings. He had never washed a dish or plate, never turned on a stove, never touched a broom. My mother placed every meal before him as soon as he beckoned for them, and his Ital diet was our diet. The television remote and every channel we watched were his. His song the only song. And so it followed that our punishment was his alone. loc. 2343

4. Gorgeous expression about black womanhood, even in girlhood: I stayed in bed unmoving, eyeing a cocoon in a jar on our bedside table, where a once jewel-green caterpillar had hardened into a brown thorn overnight, and was now as unrecognizable and unmoving as a dead thing. It was hard to believe anything beautiful could come next. loc. 2468

Three (or less) things I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. The religious types of abuse perpetrated against women and children in this book gives me a muddied perspective of Rasta. Practicing members (believers? ) eschew faith structures as tools of Babylon, but embrace the ideologies that conveniently allow them to enforce misogyny and child abuse. ...Yes, she sees it too: Our joy made us heedless. Easy prey for the wicked world out there. So, there were to be no more nature walks, and we were not allowed to leave the yard. There was no more running around the bush, no more dancing in the rain. No more jumping and catching sugarcane ash. Our star sign of yes became a stop sign of no, as he reeled us in tighter and locked us under his stare, always with the constant warning, “Chicken merry, hawk deh near.” loc. 1631

2. I had to DNF the book at 54% because of the repeated detailed descriptions of violence against children. This type of content is severely triggering for me and, given the option, I never engage with it. I strongly encourage the publishers to include content warning for child abuse in the book's front matter. That being said however, this is a really strong book and I hope I can finish it some day.

Rating: 💇🏿‍♀️💇🏿‍♀️💇🏿‍♀️💇🏿‍♀️ / 5 daughter severing ties

Recommend? Yes!

Finished: Sep 27 23

Format: Digital arc, Kindle

Read this book if you like:

🗣 memoir

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 family stories, family drama

👭🏽 teenage girl friendships 

💇🏿‍♀️ women's coming of age 

💚 Rastafari

❤️‍🩹 overcoming abuse

Blurb (Kindle Store):

A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!

With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and 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 and dresses to cover their arms and 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 and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.

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