One of the best memoirs I've read. Sinclair leaves no stone unturned when it comes to revealing her life to us.

She recounts the events of her childhood and early adulthood, and explores the effects of growing up in a strict Rastafarian household. While her father's extreme expectations and consequences are central to Sinclair's story, she also delves into his psyche and history in a way that helps to explain his actions while still holding him to account.

If I didn't know going into this memoir that Sinclair is a poet, it would not have taken me long to figure it out. Her command of language is powerful and she weaves exquisite and intricate poetry into her work, create vivid and moving images in her readers' minds.

If you're not already into memoirs, this would be a great place to start.

How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair is an interesting, compelling and powerful memoir. A book that is very vivid and that you learn a lot from.

How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5 stars
This book was originally published on 3 October 2023
Thank you to 4th Estate and NetGalley for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Safiya Sinclair grew up guarding herself against an ever-present threat. Her father, a volatile reggae musician and strict believer in a militant sect of Rastafari, railed against Babylon, the corrupting influence of the immoral Western world. Rastas were ostracised in Jamaica, and in this isolation Safiya’s father’s rule was absolute. 

My first 5-star read of 2024. The writing is beyond gorgeous, which is not surprising when you find out that Safiya Sinclair is a poet - there is a very special quality to books written by poets.
The writing is so lyrical in places, so entrancing, that I had to remind myself that I was reading about someone's life.
Sinclair does an amazing job introducing her readers to the history of Jamaica and Rastafari, of a culture reeling from the legacy of slavery into the current oppression of a marginalised community.
It is a powerful story about finding one's own voice and own path, about abuse, familial love and forgiveness. It is not an easy read; for all of Sinclair's beautiful prose, she doesn't shy away from the harshness and reality of her upbringing, but it is definitely worth following her on her journey.

I'm a french bookseller reading in English with an english shelf in our bookshop and this book was so good. I'm only reading a few books a month in English and I literally devoured this one. The writing was easy to read. I did not know the Rastafarian culture/religion at all and it was so interesting, hearthbreaking and full of hope in the same time. Highly recommend it !!!

How to Say Babylon, Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair's memoir, is a raw, wrenching story of a young girl's struggle to find her voice and follow her own path in a culture that expects her to stay silent and fall in line, and a testament to the power of words to raze and rebuild. 

Sinclair was born in Jamaica in the mid-1980s, the firstborn daughter of a devout Rastafari couple, and her book is a fascinating, unsettling look at a unique community. Thanks to the enduring popularity of Bob Marley, the trappings of the Rastafari are considered by many to be synonymous with Jamaica and Jamaicans: dreadlocks, marijuana, reggae and the vivid red, gold and green adopted from the Ethiopian standard of Haile Selassie. However, through her family's story and carefully inserted episodes from her country's history, Sinclair paints an illuminating picture of a persecuted, marginalised minority group; I was genuinely surprised to learn that Rastafari account for just 1% of Jamaicans according to the most recent census data. With this background established, it is far easier to understand why Sinclair's father behaved in the way he did - even though it does not justify or excuse his actions. Certainly the notion of Babylon, the Rasta word for the systemically racist instituions which opress Black people, is a very real concept with tangible implications far beyond Jamaica's borders. Despite the harm she feels it has done to her personally, Sinclair holds space for the elements of Rastafari culture which she feels nourished her ealy life. 

Unlike some more mainstream ways of life underpinned by religious beliefs, Rastafari has no universal doctrine or scripture which unites its disciples, but rather relies upon ideas spread by word of mouth (and, latterly, the internet), though these roughly coalesce into three main schools of thought. Sinclair describes how her father 'found himself most called to the unwavering discipline of the Mansion of Nyabinghi, the strictest and most radical sect of Rastafari, and constructed the man he would become around it,' demonstrating unarguably how this fracturing led to the breakdown of her own family, empowering her father as it did to see himself as 'a living godhead, the king of his own secluded temple.' I found these sections of the book, which explored Rasta heritage and drew a straight line from their opression by Babylon to Sinclair and her sisters' opression at their father's hands a generation later, utterly compelling. The author breathes life and feeling into fairly dense historical exposition thanks to her gift with selecting and manipulating words so that each sentence is rich with subtext; for instance, she recalls how the Ethiopian Empereror (and perceived Rastafari Messiah) Haile Selassie visited Jamaica for the first time in 1966, stating darkly that, while he was a unifying figure for Rastas, she came to view him as the man 'whose existence would come to unstitch my family.'

In the acknowledgements, Sinclair pays tribute to her homeland for inspiring and nourishing her, and the text sings with vivid descriptions of the Jamaican setting - from isolated country villages to postcard perfect beaches. She describes people, ideas and even the most mundane events with a poet's lyricism, weaving in notes of magical realism to highlight the theme of feeling trapped and doomed, and bringing her family members - particularly her mother - to life. Sinclair's father too is written with great love and sensitivity, even at his most brutal moments, and I thought it was a very honest portrayal of her relationship with a man whom she felt tremendously disappointed and angered by and yet deeply connected to. The enduring grace and empathy she has for both of her parents is quite remarkable. 

Some sections of the book felt overlong or a little repetitive, and there were episodes which seemed neither particularly noteworthy nor important in the long term. The ending felt like it was building towards a crescendo which then receded, but it seems churlish to criticise this, as the author is surely not making decisions in her life with an eye to what would be the most profound or dramatic. 

Thank you to NetGalley and 4th Estate for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.

This is such a brilliant memoir and one I highly recommend. This book follows Safiya and her complicated relationship with her family and journey to find herself. She tells a powerful story and is not afraid to detail the flaws and difficulties in her childhood and young adulthood. Equally the love she has for her family and her country shine through despite the complexity of her upbringing.
This memoir is beautifully written and it is clear to see Safiya’s background in poetry translated in this lyrical writing. I was completely absorbed by the excellent writing.

I want to preface this review by saying that I know lots of people who are allied to various religions and they are all kind, decent people who wouldn't dream of twisting their religion to their own ends. The problem in this book, as can so sadly often happen, is Safiya's father, father to her three other siblings, husband to her kind and downtrodden mother, son to a mother he can only see as dirtied, brother-in-law to aunties he drags his family away from, who embraces the practise of a violently misogynistic and patriarchal brand of Rastafarianism that leads him to abuse his family and seek to separate them from the world, while going off to Japan to pursue his music career and having multiple affairs.

We see Safiya and her siblings being lectured, forced to wear their hair a particular way, stopped from having friendships outside the family, only getting educated through their mum's efforts and machinations. This book is elevated from being a simple misery memoir by the quality of its writing and structure. Sinclair created herself as a poet first and mentored by an unnamed much older man, got published and noticed just when she had given up hope of getting away from home, leading eventually to her confidence and escape. In this at times searing and brutal book, she delineates her father's decline into paranoia and coercive control (he uses physical force, too, though this is a tipping point) and peppers the book with tiny moments of rebellion, of strength gained from female relatives, of strength in siblinghood, which allows all of the children and, finally, their mother to break free.

She also has the self-possession to share the history of Rastafari and her relationship with the religion, as well as the entente she is able to develop with her father from a distance. Moving from an island haunted by colonialism to the shock of being Black in America, Sinclair has the remarkable maturity to be able to draw strength from her childhood religion in a remarkable turn.

"I might have left Rastafari behind, but I always carried with me the indelible fire of its rebellion. and when I returned to America, I would walk taller. Babylon would never frighten a daughter like me."

Truly a remarkable book, and an achievement in both literature and life.

Blog review published 19 Feb 2024 here: https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2024/02/19/book-review-safiya-sinclair-how-to-say-babylon/

This is no ordinary memoir. Sinclair's poetic writing and compelling story is mindblowing.

Safiya grew up in a Rastafarian family where her father dominated her life and that of her mother and siblings. His goal was to protect them from Babylon and with each year came new rules and eventually a life of strict discipline and unconditional devotion.

What impressed me most was how courageously Sinclair exposes the flaws within her family. This is definitely not an easy story to tell.

How to Say Babylon is insightful, powerful and unforgettable. Definitely one of the best memoirs I have read.

I was utterly absorbed by this memoir. I didn't know very much at all about Rastafarianism and Sinclair offers us a tremendously powerful journey through her life and that of her family with the constraints that her Rastafarian father placed upon them. She evokes a sense of time and place so well that at times I felt I was completely immersed in the world she creates. At times I was reminded of Tara Westover's Educated in that both women evoke the conflict of the love they have for their families but also the horrors of their lives and how they were able to use education to pull themselves out of one world and into another. This is a stunning book.

As soon as I read an extract from this luminous, sensual memoir in the Guardian, I knew I had to get my hands on the book, so my heartfelt thanks to Fourth Estate and William Collins for granting me quick access to a digital galley.

Safiya is the first child of the creative, loving Esther - initially told by a doctor that she can't have children, she ends up having four - and Howard/Djani, her charismatic and powerful father, a musician and creator whose rages come to dominate his family's lives. Both abandoned children themselves, her parents struggle and react in different ways, Djani cursing his neglectful mother to her face and beautiful Esther withdrawing into domesticity and spliff-smoking to cope with her increasingly heavy load.

Moving from a seaside shack to one rented flat after another and washing up in an almost-forgotten town where Safiya's family are the first people to move in for years, Safiya learns to assert herself through her intelligence and beauty - her career as a 'mogeller' is thwarted by her father refusing to let her cut her dreadlocks 'not versatile enough' according to the fashion editors in New York - and her poetry, as well as forging an identity for her that as a poet myself, I can recognise and have never seen so well described, also brings her some complicated male attention in the form of an 'Old Poet,' her mentor and more - another man she can never quite make peace with. This is a memoir and a half, and a genuine insight into an unfamiliar world.

This is the kind of book that will make you sit up and take notice, because with the justified anger in this book, how could you not? A memoir about growing up in a Rastafarian household will truly open your eyes about how some people can twist basic human rights and rules to their own dark advantage.

I have never read a book so full of anger, AnGeR, ANGER and it is rightly so full for very good reasons.

For any individual to take an established belief system and interpret it to control their own family is reprehensible. To take it to extremes because most of them are female is beyond sanity. In How To Say Babylon, the individual is male and he is exercising the only power he has over anything - oppression of family.

What is truly amazing is, by the end of the book, Safiya Sinclair seems to have found a way through!

Précis of the above is - treat yourself to this book. I cannot stress this enough, it is so worth reading.

How to Say Babylon is a courageous memoir of growing up in a Rastafarian home.

Sinclair captures the beauty and lyricism of her poetry in her prose, which makes this a very fluid read, even with the difficult subject matter. This is a story of fear and domestic abuse, but also survival and the power of familial love. I also learned a lot about Rastafari and Jamaican culture: another side of the complex legacy of colonialism in the Caribbean.

It's a bold, brave autobiography which you can tell has been years in the making: highly recommended.