What were the most challenging sections? The sections where I am an adolescent were just punishing. I read a poem that I had written for him, and when I got off the stage, after years of feeling I’d been diminished and never heard by him, he whispered in my ear: “I’m listening and I hear you.” In that moment, I just felt this catharsis – a literal, physical release of burdens from my body – and I said: “OK, I think I can actually begin this book because I know where it ends.” In 2018, I went back to Jamaica to do a reading and my father came to hear me for the first time. How did you know you were ready to write this book? I felt called to it a little bit over a decade ago now, but there were a lot of wounds that were still fresh, and I didn’t want to write from a place of hurt or vengeance. She chronicles her embattled becoming in How to Say Babylon, an electrifying memoir that embraces not only the role of women within Rastafari culture, but also what it means to grow up poor in a “paradise” scarred by slavery and colonialism. Smart and bookish thanks to her mother’s love of literature, she soon began thirsting for independence and a voice of her own, eventually escaping to college in the US. Award-winning poet Safiya Sinclair, 39, teaches creative writing at Arizona State University, but she was raised in a strict Rastafari home in Jamaica, where her reggae musician father used faith and control to keep her from absorbing outside influences.
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