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okiecozyreader's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Written by an award winning poet from Jamaica, this is a beautifully told lyrical memoir. Safiya Sinclair describes what it was like for her to grow up in a Rastafarian household, how Rasta women were expected to behave and how they were ostracized from their community. She describes the love of her mother for her, in the midst of her father’s growing anger. I really love how she narrated the audiobook - her lyrical reading of it is just beautiful to listen to, even though the topic is hard.
“To live in paradise is to be reminded how little you can afford it.” Ch 2
“There was more than one way to be lost, more than one way to be saved. While my mother had saved me from the waves and gave me breath, my father tried to save me only by suffocation…” ch 4
“There is an unspoken understanding of loss here in Jamaica, where everything comes with a rude bargain—that being citizens of a “developing nation,” we are born already expecting to live a secondhand life, and to enjoy it. But there is hope, too, in our scarcity, tolerable because it keeps us constantly reaching for something better.” Ch 5
“We pushed our heavy boulders up the same punishing hill, passing each other and pretending we were alone in our misery. We each carried our weight in silence until it consumed us, collapsing, as all things must, into a black hole. One Saturday afternoon I decided to let that boulder go. Let it crush me if it must.” Ch 16
“To live in paradise is to be reminded how little you can afford it.” Ch 2
“There was more than one way to be lost, more than one way to be saved. While my mother had saved me from the waves and gave me breath, my father tried to save me only by suffocation…” ch 4
“There is an unspoken understanding of loss here in Jamaica, where everything comes with a rude bargain—that being citizens of a “developing nation,” we are born already expecting to live a secondhand life, and to enjoy it. But there is hope, too, in our scarcity, tolerable because it keeps us constantly reaching for something better.” Ch 5
“We pushed our heavy boulders up the same punishing hill, passing each other and pretending we were alone in our misery. We each carried our weight in silence until it consumed us, collapsing, as all things must, into a black hole. One Saturday afternoon I decided to let that boulder go. Let it crush me if it must.” Ch 16
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Drug use, and Infidelity
linnaeauliassi's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
kendragaylelee's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.75
How to Say Babylon is a coming-of-age novel full of lush language and a longing and love for the Jamaican landscape. It's about being Rastafarian in Jamaica; it's about being a woman under the godlike rule of an unhappy and self-righteous father; it's about loneliness and doubt and family.
It's a powerful and difficult read.
Safiya Sinclair highlights the complexities of being raised in a strict religious household: misogyny tangled up in love, self subjugated to oppressive ideology, crushing self-doubt and alienation. But the triumph of this memoir is Sinclair's ability to make the reader feel the fear and loss inherent in walking away from religion when that religion feels inextricable from family. She seeks over and over to find the love that underlies family, even in the face of violence and intimidation.
I've read a lot about leaving American Evangelicalism, and in some ways the otherness inherent in growing up Rasta in Jamaica mirrored the isolation and self-righteousness that I experienced as an evangelical kid in the in the 1980s. But the othering of Rastafarians was real and often violent (as opposed to the imagined threat to our "values" that evangelicals experience in America). The loss that comes with liberating oneself from the kind of religion that renders you valueless is an emotional turmoil that is complete and upending. And Sinclair had the ability to make me feel that confusion, longing, frustration, desperation, and loss.
But ultimately, as I'm beginning to understand is true so many times in life, there is triumph in survival. And there is something even more powerful in weaving the story into art, into connection, into a new reality that takes pain and makes it a touchstone for something transcendent and freeing.
Support Bookish and buy How to Say Babylon here: https://bookshop.org/a/4334/9781982132347
It's a powerful and difficult read.
Safiya Sinclair highlights the complexities of being raised in a strict religious household: misogyny tangled up in love, self subjugated to oppressive ideology, crushing self-doubt and alienation. But the triumph of this memoir is Sinclair's ability to make the reader feel the fear and loss inherent in walking away from religion when that religion feels inextricable from family. She seeks over and over to find the love that underlies family, even in the face of violence and intimidation.
I've read a lot about leaving American Evangelicalism, and in some ways the otherness inherent in growing up Rasta in Jamaica mirrored the isolation and self-righteousness that I experienced as an evangelical kid in the in the 1980s. But the othering of Rastafarians was real and often violent (as opposed to the imagined threat to our "values" that evangelicals experience in America). The loss that comes with liberating oneself from the kind of religion that renders you valueless is an emotional turmoil that is complete and upending. And Sinclair had the ability to make me feel that confusion, longing, frustration, desperation, and loss.
But ultimately, as I'm beginning to understand is true so many times in life, there is triumph in survival. And there is something even more powerful in weaving the story into art, into connection, into a new reality that takes pain and makes it a touchstone for something transcendent and freeing.
Support Bookish and buy How to Say Babylon here: https://bookshop.org/a/4334/9781982132347
emilyckyle's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
gabriellewrren's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
This was a beautiful read, yet it was a hard read. Each passage was so rich … it felt like I was riding waves. The poetics have swallowed me up! I will be thinking of the Sinclair’s for a long time to come.
delafork's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0