THE INDOMITABLE SAFIYA SINCLAIR CAUGHT BETWEEN A NARROW PATERNITY AND A LOVING MOTHER IN HOW TO SAY BABYLON

Abstract

In this powerfully compelling memoir, Safiya Sinclair candidly presents her extraordinary struggle to survive paternal pressure and the undermining of female worth in her own home, within a family rooted in patriarchal Rastafarianism and post-colonialism. The reader travels alongside her on her painful journey as she matures into a highly articulate and educated woman through maternal support and paternal belief in the family. Socially isolated through an extreme religious sect and repeated house moves, the children grow up under the powerful force of their father
as a virtual godhead figure, while the mother is their daily, vibrant wellspring of life. Yet the father’s career struggles, initially gaining success in his reggae career, before all his efforts crash into failure, bring financial and emotional distress, while his religious belief and racial passion never founder. Retreating into religious fundamentalism affords him a rationale to circumscribe the women of his family while asserting his own authority against them, giving him security in a precarious life. The mother’s support extends a protective shield over her children throughout,
although even she is traumatized into isolating her daughter when her father’s bullying drives a wedge between them. The contradictions of their situation emerge, as an intelligent family succeeding despite the intersectional challenges of colonialism, race, class and poverty stacked against them, while the girls are dragged back psychologically and physically under the mixed messages of the importance of educating themselves balanced against the imperative need to sustain their moral and physical purity. After many years Safiya acknowledges that despite their
father’s undoubted love for them, she and her sisters are subjugated as females, regarded as less worthy to fulfil their dreams and suitable only for second track achievements. Her father’s mind is locked into the paradox of nurturing and protecting his family against the racial, social and religious forces stacked against a poor Black family in a Jamaican community, while emphasizing the restraints limiting women. She comes to appreciate how his career frustrations and failure to
gain fame as a reggae artist become a negative force which he projects back onto his family in savage defense against his own loss of worth, hammering a nail into the coffin of their precarious survival. Throughout this memoir, Sinclair’s exceptional linguistic skills, her honestly and visionary determination drive her along on her painful journey towards expressing her powerful personality in a uniquely poetic voice, enabling her ultimately to win through to success and fame against all the odds.