Sinclair explores her repressive childhood under a strict Rastafarian father and how she broke away
Born in a seaside Jamaican village near Montego Bay, Safiya Sinclair grew up in a strict Rastafarian family on the fringe of a hedonistic tourist mecca. By the age of 8, she had heard her father rail about the evils of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher so often that when the family was naming its first pets, two black-and-white puppies, Safiya and her brother chose “Reagan” and “Thatcher.
The book grabs the reader because of the beauty of its words, but it sticks because of the thorniness and complexity of its ideas. “How to Say Babylon” exposes the rot in the heart of a not-quite post-colonial nation that also boasts about its distinctive identity.