Read With Us: How to Say Babylon

Last week, Kym gave you an introduction to our current Read With Us selection, How to Say Babylon. This week I'm going to tell you a little bit more about this memoir by Safiya Sinclair. In simple terms, the book is about growing up in Jamaica with a strict and controlling Rastafarian father and how the author struggled and came to find her own power. But there is much more to it than that. 

I just finished Babylon last week and because it was due back at the library, I'm not sure I'll have a chance to reread it before our discussion. I've been trying to search out some more information about Sinclair in the hope this might help me to better understand her. I've read interviews with her, read her poetry, and even found an interview she did with Tara Westover. I'm going to share some bits and pieces with you that I found helpful. 

This Pen Ten interview from 2017 helped me to better understand Sinclair's journey as a writer and poet. This paragraph about when she began considering what kind of poet she wanted to be was especially illuminating for me:

"However, I would say that coming to America as a college student is the first time I really considered what kind of poet I wanted to be. I brought my work into a Bennington College workshop when a white student crossed out any references to Jamaican flora and fauna she didn’t recognize, scratching out the Jamaican patois, remarking “Can you say this in English?” And that was the moment I decided that my responsibility as a poet was to always keep my gaze centered on my Jamaican landscape, to tell the stories of Jamaican womanhood, of blackness and marginalization, to write against postcolonial history and nurture anti-colonial selfhood. To leave no space, no place, not even a sliver of consideration for the venal hegemony of whiteness in my imagination; dark, beautiful, and untamed."

(I did have to look up venal hegemony and it sounds like it might be dominance capable of being bribed. If her main goal is to focus on Jamaica and tell the stories of Jamaican womanhood, Blackness, and marginalization, I would say that she is succeeding.)

Because Sinclair's poem Silver figures largely in How to Say Babylon, I wanted to read the whole thing. It was difficult to track down (it turns out it's on the endpapers of the hardcover version of the book), but I'm going to leave it here in case you might also learn something from reading it.

Silver flows through my veins

Into my hands when I caress the strings 

                            of my guitar

Silver is the moon I swallowed

on a dry dreary night when I willed it so

silver is the rain in May

wholesome and lithe and falling into me

Our springtime sarabande kisses me sodden

up then I'm happy

down then I'm sad

Silver    I cry        Silver

Silver encases my heart

like a drunk jeweller quenching a cigarette

silver is my lips against the ice

my tongue against the frost

the sweet staccato

my praline dress

my stuck umbrella on a sunshiny day

Silver is the witty wind

coaxing my eyes to sleep

upon the blurred pastel pages

of a slipshod butterfly

Silver is a legerdemain

Legs like a leprechaun that feeds on leer 

                                       and lemons

A quire of my deepest thoughts

the inkling of my most secret soul

It is the palsied web

of the crestfallen spider

the ugly dewdrop ring

that scars my finger like acid

dusk that brings the sidereal night

resting its echo upon the wing

of a firefly that drinks the silver from my eyes

Silver is my billowing meerschaum

is the flicking goldfish fin in the silent sun

silver are the wispy strands in my hair

lined silver spiralling through the universe

Silver chose me

like starlight to the naked eye

the words I bleed are silver

the time that dances minuets

upon my broken sylvan skin,

is silver in a lancer's armor

when my stomach bursts

and I disgorge eternity

silver stands beside me

fondling the viol

The weight, the wind, are uxurious

for they are solely silver

ever heading my way

My ears are filled with a pixie's dreams

like honey      only Silver

when the days of maiden's trouble subside

silver peels away

My belly swells

and it'll be a while

but I know more silver 

is welling

inside

Lastly, here is a video of Safiya Sinclair being interviewed by Tara Westover, author of Educated, at the Center for Fiction They have more than a few things in common, but there are also many differences. I loved how Westover let Safiya Sinclair tell her story. It's over an hour long, but maybe you'll find an opportunity to listen to it. 

How to Say Babylon is currently available from Amazon in hardcover ($15.55) or Kindle ($14.99), or from Audible. You can check your local bookstores for a copy — and, of course, the book should also be available at most libraries. I had to wait about two and a half weeks for the audio version, and after I had some difficulty understanding "spoken Jamaican" I had another almost three-week wait for the Kindle version. Reading and listening to both versions worked well for me. 

Our book discussion day for How to Say Babylon will be Tuesday, June 11, 2024. Carole, Kym, and I will each post discussion questions on our blogs that day, and then at 7:00 pm Eastern time we’ll be hosting the always educational and fun live book discussion on Zoom. I have some questions about this book, but I always come away from our discussions with a better understanding. I'm counting on all of you!