A review by flyingfox02
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair

4.25

Safiya Sinclair is a poet and that is evident in the way that her sentences seem to sing at times, with deliberate rhythm and rhyme of carefully picked out words and beautiful metaphors. The stunning prose is matched with her remarkable storytelling ability, as she recounts her experiences of growing up in a strict Rastafari household under the suffocating grip of her angry father. Sinclair's relationship with him is deeply complex and harrowing to read, but she's able to dig into the story of his own upbringing without excusing his behaviours. Her mother is loving, gentle, strong, the one who shielded her and her siblings from her father's anger, but Sinclair also recites how she has hurt and been hurt by her mother. It is this ability to paint the people in her life fully, without making one out to be a monster or a saint, that makes this memoir so rich and engaging.