Scan barcode
A review by flightyrachel
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
3.75
This is a powerful memoir by a very impressive woman, but when she wrote of her reasons for originally delaying writing it, I wondered if she should have waited a little longer to gain even greater perspective.
There's a slipperiness here, a lack of self reflection that jars, especially when others are held up to the light so devastatingly. I found such a disconnect between the author's idea of her own oppression and her actual experiences... She was sent to an elite private school, scouted as a model, headhunted and published as a poet, given a full scholarship to a U S university and it's never really explained how these amazing opportunities have fallen into her lap. And why her father, who doesn't let her walk outside in the street, agrees to her taking them up. I ended the book greatly moved but also puzzled.
There's a slipperiness here, a lack of self reflection that jars, especially when others are held up to the light so devastatingly. I found such a disconnect between the author's idea of her own oppression and her actual experiences... She was sent to an elite private school, scouted as a model, headhunted and published as a poet, given a full scholarship to a U S university and it's never really explained how these amazing opportunities have fallen into her lap. And why her father, who doesn't let her walk outside in the street, agrees to her taking them up. I ended the book greatly moved but also puzzled.