Safiya Sinclair

Gebundenes Buch

How To Say Babylon

A Jamaican Memoir

Beschreibung

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 Guardianand Observersummer 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

Autor

Safiya Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Writers' Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award in Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Cannibal was selected as one of the American Library Association's Notable Books of the Year, was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Seamus Heaney First Book Award in the UK, and was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Nation, Poetry and elsewhere. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: HarperCollins Publishers
• Seitenzahl: 352
• Erscheinungstermin: 3. Oktober 2023
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 236mm x 154mm x 32mm
• Gewicht: 562g
• ISBN-13: 9780008491284
• ISBN-10: 0008491283
• Artikelnr.: 62608236

Rezensionen

"Impossible to put down. . .Each lyrical line sings and soars, freeing the reader as it did the writer."-People

"The book grabs the reader because of the beauty of its words, but it sticks because of the thorniness and complexity of its ideas."-The Washington Post

"[A] breathless, scorching memoir of a girlhood spent becoming the perfect Rasta daughter and an adolescence spent becoming one of Jamaica's most promising young poets."-The New York Times

"In this remarkable memoir, Sinclair, an award-winning poet, conjures coming of age in Jamaica with her father, a reggae musician who embraced a strict sect of Rastafari and sought to protect his family from the evil and pervasive influence of the

West-what Rastafari call Babylon-and coming into her own as a poet, a writer, and a young woman in charge of her own destiny."-The New Yorker

"This memoir is a melodious wave of memories and interrogations that illustrates Sinclair's skill as both a poet and a storyteller....The magical way she strings sentences together, on its own, is reason enough to indulge in this memoir 10 years in the making.... There were numerous attempts to silence her, but Safiya Sinclair came out on the other side, victorious against patriarchy and colonialization; roaring from the hills like the lioness that she is."-NPR.org

"A courageous memoir of breaking free from a father's oppression - and how poetry can be a salve against chaos....A story about hope, imagination and resilience."-The Guardian

"The strength of Sinclair's memoir lies partly in its refusal to assign simple, individualized meaning to hallmark coming-of-age moments....?How to Say Babylon?also captures remarkable, intensely labored journeys toward forgiveness. Far from being a trite solution to traumas, Sinclair's striking memoir is a testament to her craft and her capacity for self-preservation." -The Atlantic

"Intensely candid, multidimensional, and altogether dazzling."-The Millions

"Sinclair recounts her harrowing upbringing in Jamaica in this bruising memoir.... In dazzling prose ... she examines the traumas of her childhood against the backdrop of her new life as a poet in Babylon.... Readers will be drawn to Sinclair's strength and swept away by her tale of triumph over oppression. This is a tour de force."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Sinclair's gorgeous prose is rife with glimmering details, and the narrative's ending lands as both inevitable and surprising. More than catharsis; this is memoir as liberation."-Kirkus Reviews?(starred review)

"Sinclair's rich, harrowing memoir, "How to Say Babylon," is a story about home and its fragmentation."-LA Times

"Safiya Sinclair knows just how to make a reader feel the intensity of every word on the page."-Shondaland

"A true stand out."-Good Morning America

"I cried so many different kinds of tears reading Safiya Sinclair's How to Say Babylon. In addition to the deep love, courage, intelligence and compassion of her writing, what caused me to well up repeatedly was the understanding that I was in the presence of an enormous soul."-Tracy K. Smith in the New York Times