It’s not unusual for an autobiography to chart a person’s passage from rags to riches, ignorance to enlightenment, or bondage to freedom. It is unusual to find one as powerful and disturbing as Safiya Sinclair’s debut memoir, “How to Say Babylon,” which has already drawn comparisons to Tara Westover’s “Educated” and Mary Karr’s “The Liars’ Club.”
Sinclair, an award-winning poet who teaches creative writing at Arizona State University, grew up in extreme poverty in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in the shadow of the luxury hotels that cater to wealthy tourists. Her father, a reggae musician, was a militant follower of a strict Rastafari sect. Her mother, selfless, loving and subservient to her father, was Safiya’s lifeline, introducing her at a young age to poetry, which became her ticket out.
