Date of publication: 2023
Country: Jamaica
Genre: Autobiography
Introduction
How To Say Babylon is my second Caribbean-authored book this year, and I have learned a lot about Rastafarianism and Jamaica. I always wondered about the significance of former Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie to Rastafarians but never took the time to research it, and this book brought much-needed clarity.
The first thing I thought when I started reading How To Say Babylon was how poetic Safiya’s writing was. I found out later in the book that she indeed is a poet, a very successful one. She uses her gift of poetry to tell her story in a gripping, yet lyrical and enchanting way. This, so far, was one of the most unputdownable books I read this year.
It had me asking so many questions, though. Like, why are so many places, faiths and cultures so oppressive to women? Learning about Rastafarian culture in this book had me return to this question time and again. Why do so many aspects of life around the world fixate on subjugating women and positioning men in power, dominion and control?
There seems to be no safe spaces for women; this is not surprising, but I still get utterly disappointed when I learn about another platform where men take power to rule over women. Even men who seem promising and want to help, like Safiya’s mentor in this book, always seem to want to get a piece of a woman.
Book Summary
Safiya leaves no stone unturned in this telling of her family’s story. She starts with her father and mother’s younger days. Their history, their relationships with their own families. Her father’s abandonment by his mother due to his Rastafarian religion and how her parents eventually met, leading up to her birth and that of her siblings.
She speaks fully about her family and what being a Rastafarian has shaped her existence. Her father carved out an exclusive path for a family that did not fully align with other Rastafarian sects, but one that Safiya came to call the Sinclair sect, totally and tightly controlled by her father. He made the rules and made all the family decisions. He decided what males’ and females’ roles were in his household – giving various passes to her brother/his son, but clamping down on his daughters and wife. He decided their diet and what aspects of the wider world, what he called “Babylon”, they participated in and defied.
Living as a recluse family who moved homes frequently, Safiya and her siblings were the subjects of abject bullying and harassment in school. However, they were all exceptionally bright children, taught mainly by their mother, and usually stood out in school for their intellectual ability, often becoming recipients of scholarships. I certainly rechecked whether I knew how to spell Czechoslovakia when reading this book!
For a few years during her childhood, their household was happy. Their father, a budding Rastafarian musician, was doing well, and he was loving and kind towards his family. He obtained a recording contract in Japan, and for about two years, he was living between Jamaica and Japan, doing well and providing for his family.
That was until his fellow musician double-crossed him, and all was lost. His music career failed, never to pick up again, and he had to return home to Jamaica empty-handed. Poverty ravaged his family, and he turned on them, creating even stricter rules for his wife and children to preserve their lives and turn them from the ways of “Babylon.”
His rage turned to violence over his children, with Safiya receiving the brunt of most of it. If he wasn’t lashing her down with his red belt, he was doing so with his words. Nothing Safiya did was ever good enough. Her father turned into someone his own family feared. There was always unease and tension whenever he was around. He became bitterly terrible to his wife and children, tearing them apart bit by bit.
Safiya finished her secondary school with flying colours, but her family could not afford to send her to university. She stayed at home for an extended period, becoming more exposed to her father’s bitterness every day as they both spent time at home during the day while the rest of their family was out. As he worked nights performing at hotels, he was home during the day. Safiya used this time to write and reflect, and when she started publishing, one of her well-received written works was one about her father.
Safiya, however, took her power back as she began to challenge her father and his beliefs. Started telling him to stop talking negatively about her and started creating a distance between them. She stood in her power several times, risking becoming homeless. She pierced her ears and started wearing lipstick, much to her father’s dismay. Furthermore, Safiya continues to aspire and work towards achieving her goals. Her family’s financial situation might have been dire, but Safiya never stopped going for opportunities to realise her dreams.
Eventually, they all started moving away from their father one by one.
Reflections & Themes
While reading How To Say Babylon, I reflected on several themes:
- The treatment of Rastafarians in Jamaica, something I was unaware of.
- Mr Sinclair’s double standards: he positioned himself as a righteous man who stood for purity, but he did the opposite – he ruled his family with rage, cheated on his wife, and performed at hotels of “Babylon”.
- Constraint: I often thought of how the lack of choice kept Safiya going back to living in her father’s rented homes. How suffocating and difficult that must have been.
- Freedom: freeing themselves one by one from their father, cutting their dreadlocks and leaving his house one by one.
- A mother’s strength: Their mother was remarkable. Her strength in caring for the children, finding ways to feed them when there was no food in the house. Educating them.
Recommendation
This is a 5/5 recommendation from me, I think everyone should read it.
About the Author
Find out more about Safiya and her work here.
Safiya Sinclair is a Jamaican-born writer from Montego Bay. Her memoir, How to Say Babylon, is highly acclaimed: winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography, a Kirkus Prize finalist, longlisted for the Women’s Prize in Non-Fiction and the OCM Bocas Prize, and featured on numerous “Best of 2023” lists (including the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, TIME, NPR, The Guardian, and more). The audiobook was also named among the year’s best by Audible and AudioFile. She previously published the poetry collection Cannibal, which won major honors including a Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize.
Reference
Sinclair, S. (n.d.) How to Say Babylon. Safiya Sinclair. Available at: https://safiyasinclair.com/home-how-to-say-babylon
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