Books
Book review: Safiya Sinclair memoir casts shadows in Jamaican sun
Poet’s piercing book can be a tough read, like a Rastafarian Angela’s Ashes, but it shines a light on a culture that’s little understood in the West
Award-winning Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair’s searing memoir about growing up in a Rastafarian family paints a picture of poverty, deprivation and brooding violence that’s a million miles away from the Caribbean idyll fed to tourists.
Born in 1984, Sinclair grew up poor in a tin-roofed shack her grandfather built on the sands of Montego Bay. She lived in the shadow of luxury hotels where rich white tourists were force-fed an image of Jamaica as a ...
