A review by alisonburnis
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair

dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.25

I read an excerpt of this memoir when it was published in The New Yorker earlier this year, and knew I had to read Sinclair’s whole memoir when it came out. With beautiful, lush prose, Sinclair tells her story: the eldest daughter in a strict and abusive  Rastafarian family, suffering from generational trauma and poverty, seeking ways to get out of the cage her father locked her in. Sinclair shows early promise as a poet, and that becomes her path out, and her way to finding herself. 

It’s a complicated family portrait, and Sinclair does not shy away from the pain, but also the humanity in all of her loved ones: it would have been easy to villainize her father, but she writes about their relationships with incredible compassion and tenderness, yet never letting him off easily. It’s wonderful to read such a brilliantly felt memoir.