Notes from America with Kai Wright

In Safiya Sinclair’s new memoir, “How to Say Babylon: A Memoir,” the award-winning poet and essayist is revisiting her youth as a Rastafari girl. 

Being Rasta is about so much more than what shows up in American pop culture — it’s an anti-colonial, pro-Black way of life that was deeply important to Safiya’s father. But for her, it was a set of rules and dictates that tried to shrink the world for her and her sisters. In this conversation from October 2023, she tells Kai the story of her childhood, the history of the often persecuted Rastafari movement in Jamaica, and her own journey to finding herself by leaving behind her beloved home.

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Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.