Review: "How to Say Babylon" by Safiya Sinclair

How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
Published October 2023 via 37 Ink
★★★★★

The countryside had always belonged to my father. Cloistered amidst towering blue mahoes and primeval ferns, this is where he was born. Where he first communed with Jah, roaring back at the thunder. Where he first called himself Rasta. Where I would watch the men in my family grow mighty while the women shrunk. Where tonight, after years of diminishment under his shadow, I refused to shrink anymore. At nineteen years old, all my fear had finally given way to fire. (loc. 80*)

Growing up in a strict Rastafari household in Jamaica, Sinclair learned above all to guard herself against the dangers of Babylon: against imperialism, Christianity, atheism, white people, impurity. Her parents loved her and her siblings fiercely, fought for them to get the best education possible, but at the same time, her father's adherence to religion, and his dissatisfaction with his circumstances, got more and more stifling. He would do anything to protect his daughters from Babylon—even if that meant destroying them in the process.

Years later, while retracing the history of my family's journey into Rastafari, I would eventually come to understand that my mother felt called because she wanted to nurture, and my father felt called because he wanted to burn. (loc. 352)

This is such a complicated, heart-wrenching story, and it is absolutely beautifully written. I didn't know, going in, that Sinclair is a celebrated poet, but I guessed that she was a poet within a few pages of the book. One of the things I love about poetry (or, poetry done right) is that it calls for such precision of language, and when a poet can translate that skill into prose—not an easy job—it can be phenomenal. Part of Sinclair's story is about learning to hone her skills as a poet, but even when she's writing about writing (a memoir topic I approach with extreme caution), she's writing as well about survival. Because her father could hold her back from the gates of Babylon, but he could not make her desire the restricted life of subservient daughter, subservient wife, voiceless poet.

I'm not sure where Sinclair is going as a writer from here, but wherever it is, I'll follow.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.