How To Say Babylon

Prior to reading this memoir, my scant knowledge of the Rastafari movement in Jamaica was made up of Bob Marley, whose reggae music gave the illusion of a chilled-out vibe and of Marley himself a symbol of peace, love and unity. I was also of the understanding that Rastafari is what largely defines Jamaica as a country.

However, Safiya Sinclair’s personal experience of Rastafari culture and tradition in How to say Babylon, blows that misconception out of the water. Safiya grew up in a draconian Rastafarian household. Her father, a strong exponent of the more militant sect of Rastafari, adheres to an ascetic and highly controlled Rasta existence, imposing this strict, authoritarian lifestyle on his wife and four children too.

‘Babylon’ represents or refers to anything connected to Western ideology, imperialism, colonialism and slavery, what could be viewed as oppressive to the Rasa Brethren. Her father believes that Babylon would become a corruptive influence on the family, particularly the female members.

Her father infers that a woman’s highest virtue was her silence and obedience. It is within this backdrop of stifling control that Safiya crafts a most lyrical and poetic narrative.

Her family lived on the fringes, isolated in many ways from Jamaican society. Rastafari is not part of mainstream culture, making up only 1% of the Jamaican population, and historically a persecuted minority. Often, Safiya and her siblings were the only Rastafari children in school. She sheds a sobering light on family life, her childhood and school experiences, and on some landmark Jamaican historical events. Yet Safiya’s writing is balanced with her exquisite detail of Jamaican landscapes and the vivid imagery she uses to convey her home-life, living as she did, in quite a confined, almost claustrophobic space.

While reading Safiya’s story, at times I found myself making parallels with the Irish experience of colonialism and that of the British legacy of imperialism in Jamaica. With this in mind, it was a little surreal to come across a chapter in the book, entitled ‘Not Hollywood’ where Safiya is describing the scene at home when her father is away on a work trip. During these breaks from his bullying presence, she describes how at breakfast time her mother would:

“Smirk conspiratorially, then press play on the CD player while my siblings and I gazed sly-eyed and expectantly at each other, waiting for the familiar crash of guitars and the banshee wail of Dolores O’Riordan’s voice exploding from our speakers. We loved this, so Mom loved it, too, setting a match to every morning by blasting The Cranberries at full volume, loud enough, no doubt, to be heard down the entire street, while all of us jumped around and screamed ‘This is not Hollywood!’ full-throated with the music shaking the room. For a breath of a moment, we could forget. Our bellows meant the morning was impenetrable, belonging to me and Lij and Ife and Shari and Mom. I wanted to believe I could live here. Wailing in unison at the top of our lungs, feeling some semblance of freedom, some belief.”

I thought this was an apt meeting of minds, Dolores, an Irish singer/songwriter, possessing a great talent for melodious and feisty music and storytelling, combined with a haunting, steely voice to match. Safiya, a Jamaican poet, with an equally strong, defiant quality to her poetic voice, fighting against a repressive Rastafarian upbringing. Both women, two decades apart, sharing a brutal honesty to their work.

Safiya is a published poet. What singles out her memoir from others is her rare quality of being able to paint with words, her use of and fluency in visceral and evocative language, her expressiveness, and her honesty in describing her father’s Rastafarian belief system and the effects of this trauma on her, her brother and sisters. There are no major life events in this evolving life story. By and large, Safiya leads quite a boring and oppressive day-to-day existence, “we nursed on solitude without solace” yet she can elevate this tedious life, through her writing, into the extraordinary, with her depiction of the deep love and loyalty between siblings and their mother and the ways in which they cope. She also beautifully captures Jamaican landscapes with the more bleak and mundane aspects of living in poverty and decay.

A gratifying element of the story is Safiya and her siblings, due to their gifted intelligence and resilience, have successfully removed themselves from their abusive father to avail of school and college scholarships in Jamaica and the United States. In ways, all four siblings are individually exceptional people and what should have broken them instead brought them to great heights in their professional careers and into a more peaceful adulthood. Not many families, individually or in total, would manage to survive such a blistering abusive childhood.

Safiya speaks of her mother’s love of literature and how she instilled in Safiya and her siblings that love and passion of words and storytelling. She credits her love of poetry and writing in getting through her childhood and early adulthood and in eventually escaping her father’s control and moving to college in the States, “The power of literature can really change a life”.

Though not usually an aficionado of memoirs, I believe this is a standout memoir, thanks to its author being a linguaphile, where words and language beautify her writing. To quote another poet, William Wordsworth, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” Just as Safiya’s professor, Gregory Orr, advised: ‘write this memoir from a place of safety.’

Safiya’s goal in writing her memoir was to expand the view of Rastafari history and that of Jamaican culture and tradition. I believe she achieved this and a lot more.

Safiya’s debut poetry collection: Cannibal, is also available on our library catalogue