Bøker av Safiya Sinclair

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION'Dazzling. Potent. Vital' TARA WESTOVER'A story about hope, imagination and resilience'GUARDIAN'I adored this book ... Unforgettable' ELIF SHAFAK

HOW TO SAY BABYLON is the stunning story of the author's struggle to break free of her Rastafarian upbringing and the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her. It is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica, to find her own power and voice as a woman and poet.

"Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair's father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman's highest virtue was her obedience. In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya's mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father's beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya's voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them"--

A beautiful debut collection from Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair that draws on our colonial history and speaks powerfully to our present moment.