Kirjahaku

'Dazzling. Potent. Vital' TARA WESTOVER 'To read it is to believe that words can save' MARLON JAMES 'I adored this book ... Unforgettable, heartbreaking and heartwarming' ELIF SHAFAK

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION'Vivid and empowering' GILLIAN ANDERSON'A stunning book' BERNARDINE EVARISTO'Dazzling' TARA WESTOVER'A story about hope, imagination and resilience'GUARDIAN

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 'Vivid and empowering' GILLIAN ANDERSON 'A stunning book’ BERNARDINE EVARISTO ‘Dazzling’ TARA WESTOVER ‘A story about hope, imagination and resilience’ GUARDIAN An award-winning, inspiring memoir of family, education and resilience. Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, where luxury hotels line pristine white sand beaches, Safiya Sinclair grew up guarding herself against an ever-present threat. Her father, a volatile reggae musician and strict believer in a militant sect of Rastafari, railed against Babylon, the corrupting influence of the immoral Western world just beyond their gate. To protect the purity of the women in their family he forbade almost everything. Her mother did what she could to bring joy to her children with books and poetry. But as Safiya’s imagination reached beyond its restrictive borders, her burgeoning independence brought with it ever greater clashes with her father. Soon she realised that if she was to live at all, she had to find some way to leave home. But how? How to Say Babylon is an unforgettable story of a young woman’s determination to live life on her own terms. A Guardian and Observer summer read. ‘I adored this book … Unforgettable’ ELIF SHAFAK ‘Electrifying’ OBSERVER ‘To read it is to believe that words can save’ MARLON JAMES ‘Breathless, scorching’ NEW YORK TIMES

Colliding with and confronting The Tempest and postcolonial identity, the poems in Safiya Sinclair’s Cannibal explore Jamaican childhood and history, race relations in America, womanhood, otherness, and exile. She evokes a home no longer accessible and a body at times uninhabitable, often mirrored by a hybrid Eve/Caliban figure. Blooming with intense lyricism and fertile imagery, these full-blooded poems are elegant, mythic, and intricately woven. Here the female body is a dark landscape; the female body is cannibal. Sinclair shocks and delights her readers with her willingness to disorient and provoke, creating a multitextured collage of beautiful and explosive poems.

A beautiful debut collection from Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair that draws on our colonial history and speaks powerfully to our present moment.Shortlisted for Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize 2021 A Guardian most anticipated book for 2020'Safiya Sinclair bursts onto the shelves with this richly powerful debut collection' – ScotsmanColliding with and confronting Shakespeare's The Tempest and postcolonial identity, the poems in Safiya Sinclair's Cannibal beautifully evoke the poet's Jamaican childhood and reach beyond to explore history, race relations in America, womanhood, otherness, and exile. She evokes a home no longer accessible and a body at times uninhabitable, often mirrored by a hybrid Eve/Caliban figure. Blooming with intense lyricism and fertile imagery, these full-blooded poems are elegant, mythic, and intricately woven. Here the female body is a dark landscape; the female body is cannibal. Sinclair shocks and delights her readers with her willingness to disorient and provoke. Cannibal marks the arrival of a thrilling and essential lyrical voice.'Cannibal is nothing less than an entrancing debut that reveals the teeming intellect and ravishing lucidity of a young poet in full possession of her literary powers.' – Major Jackson

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner A New York Times Notable Book A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick A Best Book of 2023 by the New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, Vulture, Shelf Awareness, Goodreads, Esquire, The Atlantic, NPR, and Barack Obama With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author's struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father's strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet. Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair's father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman's highest virtue was her obedience. In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya's mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father's beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya's voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them. How to Say Babylon is Sinclair's reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner A New York Times Notable Book Best Book of the Year for The Washington Post* The New Yorker * Time * The Atlantic * Los Angeles Times * NPR * Harper's Bazaar * Vulture * Town & Country * San Francisco Chronicle * Christian Science Monitor * Mother Jones * Barack Obama A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick "Impossible to put down...Each lyrical line sings and soars, freeing the reader as it did the writer." --People With echoes of Educated and The Glass Castle, How to Say Babylon is a "lushly observed and keenly reflective chronicle" (The Washington Post), brilliantly recounting the author's struggle to break free of her rigid religious upbringing and navigate the world on her own terms. Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair's father, a volatile reggae musician and a militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, was obsessed with the ever-present threat of the corrupting evils of the Western world outside their home, and worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure. For him, a woman's highest virtue was her obedience. Safiya's extraordinary mother, though loyal to her father, gave her the one gift she knew would take Safiya beyond the stretch of beach and mountains in Jamaica their family called home: a world of books, knowledge, and education she conjured almost out of thin air. When she introduced Safiya to poetry, Safiya's voice awakened. As she watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under relentless domesticity, Safiya's rebellion against her father's rules set her on an inevitable collision course with him. Her education became the sharp tool to hone her own poetic voice and carve her path to liberation. Rich in emotion and page-turning drama, How to Say Babylon is "a melodious wave of memories" of a woman finding her own power (NPR).

Igennem hele Safiya Sinclairs barndom er hendes far – en lunefuld reggaemusiker og militant tilhænger af en streng rastafarisekt – besat af hendes og hendes søstres renhed. Mest af alt frygter han truslen fra det, rastaerne kalder Babylon: den vestlige verdens ødelæggende og fordærvende indflydelse, som lurer lige uden for familiens havelåge. For at holde Babylon på afstand opstiller han en lang række regler, pigerne skal overholde. De bliver tvunget til at gå i lange nederdele og få dreadlocks i håret, og med undtagelse af deres skolegang er hele deres tilværelse underlagt hans snærende bånd. For Safiya er det en opvækst præget af kontrol, rodløshed, fattigdom og vold, men også morens varme og kærlighed. Selvom hun er loyal over for sin mand, giver hun sin datter den ene gave, der kan befri hende fra en fremtid som rastakvinde: en verden af poesi, viden og uddannelse. Efterhånden som Safiya bliver ældre, udvikler hun langsomt sin egen stemme som digter og kvinde, og i takt med at stemmen bliver stærkere, tør hun endelig forsøge at vriste sig ud af sin fars greb. Dette er Babylon er Safiya Sinclairs barske beretning om den kultur, der både opfostrede hende og forsøgte at få hende til at tie, om tilgivelsens helende kraft og poesien, der blev hendes livline til verden uden for havelågen.

Under Safiya Sinclairs barndom blir hennes far som tillhör en strikt rastafarisekt orolig för att västerländsk kvinnlighet skulle göra Safiya och hennes systrar moraliskt svaga och orena. Han förbjuder smink, smycken, avvikande åsikter och vänner och tvingar dem att ha kläder som täcker armar, ben och hår. Genom mammans böcker och poesin håller sig Safiya vid liv och får ett verktyg som hjälper henne att hitta sin röst och säga ifrån. Uppvaknandet leder till sammandrabbningar med hennes far, vars ilska och paranoia exploderar i tilltagande våld. När Safiyas röst växer, lyriskt och poetiskt, är brytningen till slut oundviklig.Det här är Babylon är berättelsen om en kvinna som bryter med sin fars patriarkala åsikter och repressiva kontroll och hittar sin röst som kvinna och poet.