Jamaican author Safiya Sinclair has been featured on President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2023.
The former United States president released his annual list of favorite books that he’s read for the year on Friday.
On the list is Sinclair’s “How To Say Babylon,” released in October this year.
She reacted to the news, writing on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter: “Wow. I’m speechless. Bowled over to see HOW TO SAY BABYLON on @BarackObama’s favourite books of 2023, alongside so many authors I admire. Thank you for reading and supporting literature, Mr. President! Jamaica to the world! 💚☀️🇯🇲✨”
The book is a 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.
The book is a New York Times notable read and ‘A Read with Jenna Today Show’ book club pick.
Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She moved to the United States in 2006 to attend college, first earning her BA degree from Bennington College in Vermont. She went on to obtain an MFA in Poetry from the University of Virginia, where she studied with Rita Dove, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California.
Sinclair’s poems have been published in various journals, including Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, and Granta. She wrote Catacombs, a chapbook of poems and essays, during a one-year return to Jamaica following her graduation from Bennington. It was released by Argos Books in 2011. In September 2016, she released her debut collection of poems, Cannibal, through University of Nebraska Press.
