“With echoes of Educated” is not a selling point for me; I, in a very unpopular opinion, found that book overhyped with a narrator I neither trusted nor liked. Other than some fuzzy timelines and a focus on the power of learning, I’m pleased to say Safiya Sinclair’s How to Say Babylon (Simon & Schuster 2023) is authentic, genuine, and full of a roaring heart – in short, it’s nothing like Educated.
Safiya Sinclair is a poet. While it may have taken Derek Walcott to make her believe it, she was a poet long before he said it. What she does with words, how she molds them, strings them, hums them, is an artform. This is her mother’s doing, lit with the fire of her father’s anger and power become her own. The memoir chronicles her rigid Rastafarian upbringing with a father who became increasingly more controlling the older she got, and a mother whose spark dulled with each passing year. Sinclair found solace in words. No. That’s not right. Sinclair found rebellion in words. Rage in words. Freedom in words. Her father sought to lock her in a cage; her mother gave her the gift of words to escape.
Sinclair is unflinching in her portrayal of a father whose voice was like warm honey or the sharp blade of a machete, unflinching in her portrayal of a mother who sacrificed her to his wrath, unflinching in her portrayal of a country that eagerly lapped her blood. It’s raw, unfiltered, and broken – like her.
How to Say Babylon is the story of a woman healing her inner child, standing strong next to memories that could destroy, finding forgiveness for a love that was never severed and a past that cannot be excused, listening to the water that defined her younger years, and knowing where her heart beats loudest. Even still.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 