Wow.
There are so many things I want to say about this memoir, but I don’t think I have the words to do it justice.
About the Book
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair explores the author’s upbringing in Jamaica within a strict Rastafarian family. The memoir brilliantly details the author’s often tumultuous experiences navigating her family’s rigid patriarchal structures and the ever-present tension between her father’s strict adherence to his beliefs and her own emerging identity and journey of self-discovery.
A Few Random Thoughts
I always enjoy reading books set in the Caribbean, especially those set in my home, Jamaica. It always feels like a return to self, a reminder of the strength and resilience of a proud and beautiful people and culture.
Too many of us grew up buckling under the weight of our parents’ expectations. I wonder if we’ll do the same with our children; I hope we do things differently.
I wonder how it feels for Rastafarians who faced and may continue to face discrimination in the workplace and wider society to see so many people walking around in faux locs?
So much of how the author feels and speaks about her mother reminds me of a poem many of us studied for our CSEC English Literature exam: For My Mother (May I Inherit Half Her Strength) by Lorna Goodison. Reading this poem two decades later with my adult eyes and experiences is WILD.
This is the best memoir I’ve ever read and may likely ever read.
My Favourite Lines
“To live in paradise is to be reminded how little you can afford it.”
Chapter 2
Oh man…listen. The beaches we pay to access. Hotel after hotel and villa after villa littering our coastlines. Rent quoted in United States Dollars. I could go on.
“Years later, while cloistered in the countryside and aching for my birthplace by the sea, I would come to understand. There was more than one way to be lost, more than one way to be saved.”
Chapter 4
Anyone who has ever left home can understand this feeling of being bereft. Here, I love the way the author uses language that is descriptive but also accessible; as such, her experiences are uniquely hers but also everyone else’s.
“I wanted him to defend me on this path he had cut through the jungle for us. Instead, he moved cautious and smiling in the face of Babylon, and saved all his fire for us.”
Chapter 12
At first, our fathers are our gods, all-seeing and all-knowing. Then we grow up and learn that they are only human, mere men who were once boys just trying to figure it out. We get the best of them and the worst of them.
“On the eve of her leaving, my siblings and I sang for her, so in Foreign she would not forget that she was loved.”
Chapter 25
This is one of the most beautiful family moments captured by the author. What a joy and blessing it is to be loved!
As I walked across the stage, I thought of the women who had come before me, my riverine clan of women known and unknown, whose many futures and possibilities and bodily autonomy had been taken, and I wept as I became the first girl in my family to graduate from college. Whatever came next, I promised myself, I would do for them. In my hands, their names and lives would never be forgotten.”
Chapter 26
I cried, I cried, I CRIED!
“A lot of us in the Caribbean have deeply complex relationships with our fathers, and so do I.”
Chapter 29
Do I need to say anything else?
Final Thoughts
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair is going to stay with me forever. Read it!
