Transcript
DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. Today we're going to listen to the interview Terry Gross recorded last year with Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair when her memoir, "Hoy To Say Babylon," was published. The book is now out in paperback. I'll let Terry introduce it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
My guest, Safiya Sinclair, grew up in a Rasta family in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Her father is a reggae singer and guitarist. Her hair was twisted into dreadlocks until she was 19. Here's what being Rasta meant in her life - men. Ruled, women were subservient. Women's place was as mother, cook and homemaker. The outside world was Babylon - corrupt, debauched or associated with colonialism or the police. The people in Babylon were heathen and to be avoided. God, Jah, was Haile Selassie, who was the Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. His portrait, Sinclair writes, was exalted and worshipped in the many rented homes of her childhood.
There were rules - lots of rules - about what she could eat, how to dress, who she was forbidden to befriend. She came to realize that for her, being Rasta meant living in a cage. She had to find a way out. It was through reading and writing poems that she came to better know herself and to break out of the cage and enter the larger world. When she was still in her teens, her poems were published in the Jamaica Observer Literary Arts Sunday Supplement. She got a scholarship to Bennington College in Vermont and went on to get her MFA at the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. She now teaches at Arizona State University. Her first book was a collection of poems called "Cannibal." It won several awards. Now she's written a memoir called "How To Say Babylon."
Safiya Sinclair, welcome to FRESH AIR. I love your memoir, and I'm so happy to have you on our show.
SAFIYA SINCLAIR: Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
GROSS: I want to start with some brief history of the Rastafari. Most Americans just know Rastas as associated with reggae, Bob Marley. They know Haile Selassie figures into it, but I think a lot of Americans aren't sure exactly how. And your memoir actually starts with some of the history, and it's really kind of fascinating. So can we start just with Haile Selassie and why he is seen as God, as Jah. He was the emperor of Ethiopia.
SINCLAIR: Yes. He was the emperor of Ethiopia. He was coronated, I believe, in the early 1930s or a little bit before that. But, you know, if we trace the roots of the Rastafari movement, it goes back to the Pan-African Jamaican abolitionist Marcus Garvey, who in one of his final farewell speeches said, look to Africa for the crowning of a Black king, for he shall be the redeemer. And so there was this idea that having this Black leader in Africa would be a kind of herald for Black liberation. And so there was a street preacher in Jamaica called Leonard Percival Howell who heard Marcus Garvey's call around the same time that Haile Selassie was coronated in Ethiopia, and Howell believed that he was him, you know? He believed Haile Selassie was this herald of Black liberation.
And then from there, the Rastafari movement just began to harden around this idea of a Black king of a nation in Africa that was the only nation to never be colonized in Africa. And so, you know, Haile Selassie then became this really aspirational figure for Black people in Jamaica. And at the time, Jamaica was still under British colonial rule. And so, you know, the movement of Rastafari really gathered a lot of strength and a lot of fire from there. And they looked toward Haile Selassie as kind of the catalyst for this fire and from where they would find their own independence and to get out of the shackles of colonialism.
GROSS: And Haile Selassie was born Ras Tafari Makonnen. So that's where Rastafari...
SINCLAIR: Yes.
GROSS: ...Comes from.
SINCLAIR: His name was Ras Tafari Makonnen. And so actually, the term Rastafari comes from his name. Yeah.
GROSS: So the Rastafari were always considered outcasts in Jamaica. Why?
SINCLAIR: Yes. You know, the movement began in the early 1930s, as I said, when Jamaica was still a colony of Britain. And Jamaica itself is a deeply Christian country, which I think is something that most people don't know. And I knew it was something that I would have to kind of talk about and explore in the book. Because Jamaica is this predominantly Christian country, when the Rastafari movement began, when we were still being ruled by the British crown, the Rastafari were seen as pariahs. They were seen as un-Christian. They were seen - you know, they were pushed to the fringes. They were kicked out of their homes by their families. They were forbidden from walking along the beach sites that were being developed for tourists. Hotels were being developed there. They were forbidden from having jobs.
And so I think they were seen as the nation's black sheep. They were seen as everything anti-Christian and anti-colonial. And that was also a deliberate root of Rastafari, to be anti-colonial and anti-Christian. But in a Christian society, you know, that was also seen as very transgressive. And so they were not accepted.
GROSS: What were you taught to believe about the righteous life, about the life of a good Rastafari girl?
SINCLAIR: You know, I was taught to be pure. Like, purity was a big defining thing for me growing up. My father would always talk about the importance of my purity because the worst thing a woman could be - or the women he saw as heathenous, he called them unclean women. And so I was taught to be pure, to be obedient, to be humble, to be silent, to be pliant. A Rasta woman was not supposed to voice her opinion or to be seen as rebellious or to speak up against her father, for a woman who was an independent, rebellious woman was an instrument of Babylon. And so, you know, there was this - all Rasta people are supposed to cultivate this idea of purity around this idea of what they call their liberty. So their entire liberty is about your body being a temple for Jah.
GROSS: And Jah...
SINCLAIR: And...
GROSS: ...Is God or...
SINCLAIR: Jah is the...
GROSS: ...Haile...
SINCLAIR: ...Godhead figure. Yes.
GROSS: Is that synonymous with Haile Selassie, too?
SINCLAIR: With Haile Selassie. Yes.
GROSS: So what did purity mean in your home as it pertained to you? What did you have to do to be pure or avoid doing to be pure?
SINCLAIR: Right. Purity was about how one kept your mind and your body clean. And so it defined what we ate. We had to eat a specific diet called an ital diet. That was no meat, no dairy, no fish, no eggs, no salt, no - like, that was part of the purity of the diet. Then it was about keeping your mind and your thoughts pure and dedicated to thoughts of Jah, of Black liberation, of working toward repatriation to Zion, which is the Rastafari term for Africa, seen as the motherland. For women in particular, purity also extended to, you know, a kind of restriction on our bodies. And so what I wore was part of my purity. I was - I had to cover my arms and knees. I had to - I could wear no makeup, no jewelry. All of that was seen as the garish trappings of Babylon. And eventually, I was not allowed to have friends. Any kind of outside influence was seen as corruptive. And most essentially, I was not allowed to question my father.
GROSS: I want to get back to that. But in keeping with the idea of purity, what did it mean to start menstruating? How did that affect your purity?
SINCLAIR: Yeah. A lot of the men in Rastafari believe that menstruation makes a woman unclean and also makes them more susceptible to moral weakness. And so from a very young age, I became obsessed with this idea of being pure versus being unclean. For a long time before I knew, I was kind of destined to be unclean once I began menstruating. But there are Rasta men who even have their women sequestered when they're menstruating. They're not allowed to be in the kitchen or touch the pots or touch any utensils because they were seen as unclean.
GROSS: Does that come from the Old Testament? 'Cause I know in very strict Judaism, women who are menstruating are considered unclean and have to have a kind of ritual bath when the cycle is over.
SINCLAIR: Yes. I think it is connected to Jewish Mosaic laws, and there is a certain sect of Rastafari that leans toward these rules that are tied to the Jewish Mosaic laws. Yes.
GROSS: And Mosaic, meaning from the Moses era.
SINCLAIR: Yes.
GROSS: So when you talk about Rastafari and you talk about your father, I sometimes in the memoir couldn't distinguish between the two because Rastafari as a community - well, there are several different sects of Rastafari. But then your father, at some point - on page 13, there's a sentence that starts, before my father thought that he was God. And I thought, wow, that's quite a thought. So what were you raised with that you think was, like, your father's own interpretation of Rastafari beliefs to give him more authority and power in the home, and what was more commonly believed among the different sects of Rastafari? Could you tell the difference?
SINCLAIR: I could not tell the difference when I was growing up. I had to learn a lot of it before I began to write the book. So I think most people don't realize that for Rastafari, there is no one united book or one - you know, one set of principles. There is no, like, Bible for the Rastafari. It's really this idea - these tenets of their liberty that's passed down from brethren to brethren. So, you know, they would sit around these, like, drum circles and pass this wisdom of Rastafari down to each other. Women were not really invited into those spaces. So for me, I had to, you know, discover it myself decades later.
GROSS: Well, we need to take a short break here. So let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is poet and now memoirist Safiya Sinclair. Her new memoir is called "How To Say Babylon," and it's about being raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in a Rastafari family. We'll be right back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. If you're just joining us, my guest is Safiya Sinclair. She's a poet and now a memoirist. Her new memoir is called "How To Say Babylon" and is about being raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in a Rastafari family in a culture where women were subservient.
So when you went to school, it took you out of the isolation that you were raised in. But on the other hand, you were isolated within school in the sense that it was only - it was a new thing that public schools were allowed to admit Rastafari children. They had been banned from going to public school. And, of course, you stood out because of your dreadlocks, and you also stood out because of your family's beliefs. So what was it like being let out of the gate but going to a place where you were - you know, you and your siblings were, like, the only ones who were Rasta?
SINCLAIR: I mean, the first time I went to school with dreadlocks - and in Jamaica, when you wear your dreadlocks, it is a signifier to anyone around you that you are Rastafari. You know, it's not a choice. It's, like, a sacred marker of Rastafari. So when I went to school after my mother had twisted my hair into dreadlocks for the first time, it was a shock. You know, the students started pointing at me. They were teasing me. I had a girl who followed me around almost every day, you know, taunting me, singing this awful song about, you know, lice killing the Rasta. And it was a strange time because for the first time, I had to renavigate my sense of self and my sense of self-worth. And I began feeling ashamed to be myself for the very first time because of how the students reacted when I went to school, because of how my teachers reacted. They weren't very kind to me. And even in the street, you know, walking to school, people would call out after me and call out after, you know, my siblings. And so it was a very strange - its own kind of isolation, as you say, actually leaving the house. Yeah.
GROSS: Your mother had six fingers on both hands.
SINCLAIR: Yes.
GROSS: So you always grew up with a sense of - there was something unique about your mother and that not everybody was really the same. Even the most common thing, having five fingers, was not true for your mother. Your mother had been told, before she knew your father, that she would never have children.
SINCLAIR: Yes.
GROSS: You know, I think it was a nurse or a doctor who diagnosed that. And she wanted to have children so badly, but she believed that. And your father told her, no, you're with me. We believe in Jah. You will have children. And you were the first-born, and it was a miracle in your family. So you got the sense, I think, early on that your family was different, that miracles could happen...
SINCLAIR: Yes.
GROSS: ...That people could be born different. How did that play into your - the ideas that your father was instilling in you and to feeling so different in the outside world?
SINCLAIR: I mean, for a long time my siblings and I felt like it was a gift, and it was something that we took pride in, that we were different. And, you know, our mother was always kind of wondrous to us, not only because she was born with these six fingers on her hands and that she was different than most of her family and that she loved reading and loved literature - and she was the one who instilled this love of literature in me from a young age. And when we went to school, we excelled at school. And so we were also different in that way, in a good way. And, you know, we took this - I think my father also took this as, like, a sign that what we were doing, how we were living was right because we were not only different, but we were excelling in our difference.
GROSS: Yeah, I think, like, your brother became a debating champion.
SINCLAIR: Yes.
GROSS: Your sister...
SINCLAIR: Amazing debate champion, yeah.
GROSS: Yeah. And your sister had the highest grades in her, basically, finishing exams in high school - the highest grades in several genres of study departments, of...
SINCLAIR: In the entire Caribbean.
GROSS: Yeah, in the entire Caribbean. And you got the scholarship to go to Bennington and became who you are now, a, you know, award-winning poet and now a memoirist. How did that happen? How did you - how were you raised so isolated and yet excel so much?
SINCLAIR: You know, I know it's all because of my mother. Like, she instilled in me and my...
GROSS: And can I just stop you there?
SINCLAIR: Yes.
GROSS: Your mother came with you today, and I think she might be listening in the control room. I'm not sure.
SINCLAIR: She is listening. Hi, Mom.
GROSS: I just want to give her a shout because you write so beautifully about her. I so much kind of wanted to meet her. I think she sounds just, like, so special...
SINCLAIR: Yeah. Yeah.
GROSS: ...In how she protected you and was on your side. And in spite of the role that women were supposed to play, she managed to teach other children. She started her own program in helping children learn and raise their IQ.
SINCLAIR: Yes. She did.
GROSS: So hello to your mother.
SINCLAIR: Hi, Mom. Yeah, and she saw education as her civic duty. Like, she really, truly believed that every child should have a good education. And even though she didn't have formal training, she invented her own, you know, program, her own curriculum for teaching other students and other children in Montego Bay the way that she developed and taught us at home. And that involved, you know, memorizing and reciting poetry, of writing our own songs, of painting, of doing nature walks, where she would take us through the neighborhood and through the forest and show us - point out to me the name of every plant and every insect and really taught us how important it was to love nature, to push your hands into the dirt and to make something, but also how literature and reading and books can really expand a life and expand a world.
And, you know, I remember she told me that's what poetry did for her. And she really instilled this in me and my siblings from, like, since we were born. And so I think all of our excelling in school comes from Mom, absolutely. And, you know, she was the person who handed me my first book of poems, and she said, read this. You know, poetry, for me, has always made the world wider and warmer. And I never forgot it. You know, what she handed to me that day when I was 10 years old was a gift.
GROSS: So I should mention when I said I think your mother's in the control room...
SINCLAIR: Yeah.
GROSS: ...You're in a studio in New York. You're at the NPR Bureau in New York, and I'm in our...
SINCLAIR: Yes.
GROSS: ...FRESH AIR studio in Philadelphia. So that's why I couldn't see for sure if your mother was in the control room...
SINCLAIR: She's there, yeah.
GROSS: ...In case that sounded a little weird to anybody. All right, so we need to take another break here. So let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Safiya Sinclair, and her new memoir is called "How To Say Babylon." And it's about being raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in a Rastafari family. We'll be right back. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Safiya Sinclair. Her new memoir, "How To Say Babylon," is about being raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in a Rastafari family. In a culture where women were subservient, the role of women was to have babies, raise children, cook and clean. And children were taught that the outside world was Babylon, and the people who inhabited it were heathen. Her entry into a larger world was through reading and writing. She came to America to attend Bennington College on a scholarship, then got her MFA from the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. She now teaches at Arizona State University. Her first book was a collection of poems called "Cannibal."
You were kind of a target at school. People didn't want to be your friend. Your father didn't let you have friends anyway. And after an argument in school, you intentionally stepped on an old piece of wood with a rusty nail sticking out, and you spiked your foot on it very intentionally and walked around with it until the wood was actually attached to your foot. What were you thinking about when you did that, and why did you want to express your anger and frustration through self-harm?
SINCLAIR: Well, you know, this happened after a girl that I thought was my friend - at school, she told me, I don't want to be your friend. I don't want to be friends with a Rasta. And so for me, that was the first time that I felt this really deep, enduring hurt, that just being a Rasta was something that was shaping my life in this way that I could never have imagined. The day that I sat down between my mother's knees and she twisted my hair into dreadlocks, I never knew what was to come next. And when this girl told me, I don't want to be your friend because you're a Rasta - I mean, I was 9 years old - I was deeply hurt, and I saw the nail, and I wanted to feel a different kind of hurt that would overtake the pain that I was feeling inwardly from this girl telling me this thing. And so to my 9-year-old self, that was the thought, that there was one pain that could overwhelm another. I'd rather feel that.
GROSS: Was that the beginning of a period of self-harm?
SINCLAIR: It was. Yes.
GROSS: How did you get out of that?
SINCLAIR: I mean, listeners might be tired of hearing me talk about poetry, but it was really poetry. Like, poetry was the thing that pulled me out of this period of thinking about myself in this really diminished way and wondering what my life was going to be. Who was I going to become? What was the future ahead of me? And for a long time, it felt that there was no answer, that there was no future and that who I was made no impact on the world, whether I was here or not. But it was through the discovery of poetry and discovery of some particular poems when I was a teenager that really lifted me from what I call the catacombs of myself. And I remember when I wrote that first poem - and it was called "Silver" - and I realized that poetry could alchemize the hurt I was feeling into something different, into something beautiful.
GROSS: So since this poem that you wrote when you were young is so significant in your life, could you read a few lines of it?
SINCLAIR: Sure. This is "Silver." I wrote this when I was 16. (Reading) 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.
GROSS: That sounds like a very self-empowering poem.
SINCLAIR: It was. This poem really saved me from, you know, my own destructive devices.
GROSS: So your father was always protecting your purity and trying to prevent you from being exposed to Babylon and to the heathen. And I don't think he and your mother ever married because he said that the Rasta didn't believe in marriage. But then later, you found out that he had a wife when you were around 3, and she had children. And your father had approached you and your siblings once and said, like, what would you think of having a second mother? And you said, no, we have a mother. But your mother heard that, too, and she certainly had a bad reaction to that. Can you tell us about that?
SINCLAIR: Well, I can tell you about my reaction, not so much hers. But I can say that my brother and I were very angry about this question that was posed to us by our father, and that was the end of it. You know, this wasn't something that we would have - we were like, there is just no realm or universe in which we would ever accept this or give you permission to do this.
GROSS: Your mother walked out on him after that, but she came right back 'cause she had no place to go. She had no money to go anyplace. She couldn't drive. She couldn't afford a taxi. So she came back. But did life change after that?
SINCLAIR: Yes. You know, she came back because of us, because of me and my siblings and because of her enduring love for us. And for a long time, I couldn't understand why she made that choice. But now I know. And in the writing of the book, I could see that it is because of her love for us, but also that it was a kind of strength for her to do that, that it took strength for her to actually do that for me and for my siblings. Our lives did change a little bit after that in that, you know, our household became more violent. I became more rebellious. My father and I always had kind of ideological clashes. I was not a silent and obedient daughter. I always questioned him. Yeah, and so that made for a lot of strife and struggle between us.
GROSS: I think it may have been around this time that you had an image of yourself - like, a ghostly image of yourself as a middle-aged or older woman who - well, you describe the image.
SINCLAIR: Yeah. So as time went on and I was living with these rules of Rastafari and living as this person that felt so far removed from myself and from who I believed I wanted to be, I had this moment when I was 19, and I just tried to look into the future of, OK, if I continued on this path of Rastafari, if I did all the things my father wanted me to do, if I became the woman he wanted me to be, who is she? Who would she be like? And, you know, she appeared to me as this, like, bent and broken Rasta woman who was silent, whose, you know, only value in this world was to be, you know, domestic and to be in the kitchen and to have children and to be sort of the extension of a Rasta bredren who was a godhead of his household and who had no - she would have no dreams or desires. She would have nothing to say in the world. She would have no art. She wouldn't have her poetry.
And that's - you know, that is the vision that came to me. And I realized I had to completely cut this woman down. I had to cut everything about her and her possibilities away from me. And that's when I decided to cut my dreadlocks and to sever the tie between me and Rastafari and between me and my father and to really try to author a future that was mine only to make.
GROSS: How old were you when you cut them?
SINCLAIR: I was 19.
GROSS: Tell us what it was like to go to a hair salon for the first time in your life, which, to you, was like - you had been told that was basically, like, ground zero of Babylon, you know?
SINCLAIR: Yes. It was like...
GROSS: So what was it like for you to enter that and be a part of it, to be transformed within it?
SINCLAIR: You know, I have so many feelings now looking back on it. So I had cut my dreadlocks, but the thought of entering the salon was that I was going to straighten my hair. I was going to relax it.
GROSS: Wait, so let's back up. Let's start with cutting the dreadlocks.
SINCLAIR: Yeah.
GROSS: So your mother and who cut them for you?
SINCLAIR: My mother and a friend of hers, yeah.
GROSS: And what did it feel like as those dreadlocks were being cut from your head, the ones that you'd worn your whole life?
SINCLAIR: It felt freeing. It felt, also - I was surprised by how emotional I was about it. I'd spent maybe the last decade before that wishing for this moment. And when it finally happened, I felt free. I felt that, OK, now I can choose who I want to become next. But in those first few moments, there was also, surprisingly, a feeling of regret or, have I done the right thing? Have I doomed myself? Am I now damned? You know, I was always told that my dreadlocks were a crown, that it was, you know, my avenue of power, that wearing my dreadlocks would protect us from injury. And so for that - you know, for a brief moment, I did kind of question, like, did I do the right thing? But afterward, I felt, finally, OK, I can, you know, kind of exhale. Finally, I can now imagine for myself who I will be and, you know, who she will be rather than the ghostly vision that I'd had before.
GROSS: It's time for another break, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Safiya Sinclair. Her new memoir is called "How To Say Babylon." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Safiya Sinclair. She's a poet, and now she has a new memoir called "How To Say Babylon." It's about being raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in a Rastafari family.
So let's get back to the salon and going there to get your hair straightened. What was that experience like for you?
SINCLAIR: I mean, it was bizarre and wonderful all at the same time - bizarre because, as you say, it was walking into this alien world. It was walking into the heart of Babylon - right? - where all the women there were dressed in ways that Rastafari bredren would not agree with women being dressed, right? They were wearing shorts. Their legs were showing. Like, they were laughing. They were wearing earrings. They had their hair done. And they welcomed me into the space. You know, I was so nervous. So, you know, it was all of these different kind of emotions wrapped up at once. And then for me, as a poet, also a writer, I was just observing everything and sort of listening to their conversations and realizing that this space of the hair salon is like its own kind of sacred space, where women gather and kind of care for each other, and the tenderness of having another Black woman touch your head. There was something in that that I also - I felt very welcome and warm in that space.
GROSS: What was your father's reaction when he saw you without your dreadlocks?
SINCLAIR: He was furious. You know, he looked through me like I was a ghost. I did not exist to him. I had become Babylon. And, you know, after I cut my dreadlocks, my middle sister cut her dreadlocks, and then my youngest sister cut her dreadlocks. And then eventually, my mother, who had been growing her dreadlocks since she was 19 years old, she cut her dreadlocks. And I think that really pushed him to a very dark and violent place. I think for a long time, he saw me as the sort of - the ruin of his family, the sort of corrupting seed that, yeah, ruined his perfect Rastafari family. And...
GROSS: And you staged a rebellion - I mean, not knowingly, but...
SINCLAIR: Not knowingly but happily.
GROSS: ...That's probably how it looked to him.
SINCLAIR: Yeah. Yeah.
GROSS: Can I ask how you wear your hair now?
SINCLAIR: I wear my hair in all kinds of ways, Terry - however I feel. Like, today it's blown out. Last week it was, you know, just natural. Three months ago it was in braids. I love having the freedom to kind of do with it whatever I feel like.
GROSS: So I want to skip ahead a little in the story of your life. You had to live at home for a while, even after cutting your dreads. You were on terrible terms with your father. You ended up getting a scholarship to Bennington, and then you did your master of fine arts in Charlottesville at the University of Virginia. And you got there in 2012. And this was your first time living in a Southern state in the U.S., a former Confederate state. And as you write, that - you know, that the signs of the slave past were all around her, and you had to learn to live in a town that you say was built on the bones of the enslaved. How is that different from living on land in Jamaica, where the enslaved people had lived, 'cause you had lived in places that were known for slavery?
SINCLAIR: Sure. But, you know, the land - like, my sea village belongs to us. And in the town squares in Jamaica, our statues are of the enslaved who led rebellions, OK? So we have the abolitionists and the rebellious enslaved. We celebrate liberation. We celebrate those who broke the chains of slavery and colonialism. Getting to Charlottesville, Va., where the monuments were of the enslavers instead of the enslaved, to me, was pretty shocking. You know, when I got there, the statue of Robert E. Lee was still in the town square. It was still in the park. And walking around UVA, everybody kind of celebrates it and talked about Thomas Jefferson in this way that I felt left a lot unsaid and that there was a lot that needed to be said. You know, I heard a lot of students and even professors refer to him as TJ without irony.
While I was there, they found, in some of the dorms on the lawn, these slave quarters that had been bricked off in the '70s. Someone had discovered them. And rather than talk about the history, they sort of brick them off that, OK, that's the end of it. We'll never talk about this history. And then they were rediscovered while I was there. And so I just felt like there was so much of the history of slavery and of, you know, American racism that was not spoken about, where in Jamaica, it is the foundation of our independence and our liberation and that we're taught in schools. And you walk through the town square, and you see Sam Sharpe who led a slave rebellion. And so, yeah, this was a completely different experience for me.
GROSS: I imagine being in largely white spaces was a completely different experience for you, too.
SINCLAIR: Absolutely. You know, even after I - you know, I went - I did my undergrad at Bennington. But there was something about going to Charlottesville and living in Virginia where a lot of the people there were adamant that they weren't in the South, but they still had, like, the statue of Robert E. Lee or walked around in the square and there was just, like, a plaque on the ground that said this was a slave auction block. In this space, slaves were bought and sold. And coming straight from Jamaica to see that, I had to think about my Blackness in a different way for the very first time and really think about who I was as a Black woman living in America in a way that I never had to think about before.
And for the first time, I actually began to think about the things my father said about Babylon, which was, you know, the representation of systemic racism and colonialism and the shackles that come with that. And it was in Charlottesville that I first began to think, OK, maybe there was - some of his lessons, there was something there about the anti-colonial sort of rebellious view of this world that was actually right.
GROSS: Let's take another short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Safiya Sinclair. Her new memoir is called "How To Say Babylon." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Safiya Sinclair. Her new memoir, "How To Say Babylon," is about being raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in a Rastafari family.
How does reggae music in America sound to you now? And when you see somebody wearing dreadlocks, how does that look to you, coming from the perspective of your own life?
SINCLAIR: I always kind of look at it with an amusement or amused curiosity. You know, being from Jamaica, everybody wants to tell me their sort of story that they know about Jamaica and what - you know, when they went on vacation to Jamaica and how much they loved Bob Marley in college. And so I have collected the stories of every single person I meet, their - you know, their, like, tenuous connection to Jamaica. But I always think of - I always hear my father's voice, funny, when - funnily when I see people wearing the dreadlocks because knowing how much it means to him and the other, you know, brethren of Rastafari and other people of Rastafari, what significance it has to them, but so many people around the world aren't aware of that significance or aren't aware of all the nuances of the - of Rastafari culture beyond, you know, reggae music and Bob Marley, you know? So I always have this kind of amused, curious reaction to seeing people like that. And I think inevitably they want to tell me their stories and their connection to Jamaica.
GROSS: What's your relationship like with your father now? Do you have a relationship?
SINCLAIR: Yes, we do have a relationship. We have a respectful relationship, a cordial relationship.
GROSS: Given that you grew up in a family where your father thought he was God and acted like he was God and he treated you and the rest of your family like he was God - but you had, you know, a loving mother who supported you - do you want to have children, or do you already have children? I always wonder how a family where the father is controlling and abusive leaves people feeling about having children of their own. I've seen it happen both ways, that people really want to have children and raise them differently, or that people just don't want to deal with it or are even afraid to deal with being a parent.
SINCLAIR: I do want to have children, yes. Having a family is important to me. And, you know, I wrote this book, and I dedicated it to my sisters, to my niece and to she who comes next. And one of the reasons that I wanted to write the book was that - you know, for my niece and for the other Sinclair girls to come, that they would know their paths and they would know their history, but that the book itself could be a kind of bridge to possibilities for the future, that she would know herself and that she would never have to know the fire and the struggle that I went through and that she would know that the future is hers for the making. And so I wrote the book for her and whatever girl is yet to come, for her to know that.
GROSS: Well, Safiya Sinclair, I love your memoir, and I'm so glad you wrote it. And I'm glad you have a life that you've chosen to live...
SINCLAIR: Thank you.
GROSS: ...And have, you know, freedom within that life to the extent that we have freedom in life. So thank you so much for this conversation.
SINCLAIR: Thank you so much for having me.
GROSS: I really appreciate it.
SINCLAIR: Thank you.
DAVIES: Safiya Sinclair speaking with Terry Gross, recorded last year. Her memoir, "How To Say Babylon," is now out in paperback. On tomorrow's show, writer Casey Michel says Washington is swarming with American citizens lobbying for foreign countries, including brutally repressive regimes and many that oppose U.S. interests. He says their advocates include former U.S. government officials, as well as major universities and think tanks. His new book is "Foreign Agents." I hope you'll join us.
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DAVIES: To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producers are Molly Seavy-Nesper and Sabrina Siewert. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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