Jamaican writer Safiya Sinclair has been featured on President Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2023.
The previous United States president launched his annual listing of favourite books that he’s learn for the yr on Friday.
On the listing is Sinclair’s “How To Say Babylon,” launched in October this yr.
She reacted to the information, writing on the social media platform X, previously Twitter: “Wow. I’m speechless. Greatly surprised to see HOW TO SAY BABYLON on @BarackObama’s favorite books of 2023, alongside so many authors I like. Thanks for studying and supporting literature, Mr. President! Jamaica to the world! 💚☀️🇯🇲✨”
The e book is a story of the writer’s wrestle to interrupt freed from her inflexible Rastafarian upbringing, dominated by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive management of her childhood, to seek out her personal voice as a lady and poet.
The e book is a New York Occasions notable learn and ‘A Learn with Jenna Right now Present’ e book membership choose.
Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She moved to the US in 2006 to attend faculty, first incomes her BA diploma from Bennington Faculty in Vermont. She went on to acquire an MFA in Poetry from the College of Virginia, the place she studied with Rita Dove, and a PhD in Literature and Inventive Writing from the College of Southern California.
Sinclair’s poems have been printed in numerous journals, together with Poetry, The Kenyon Assessment, The New Yorker, and Granta. She wrote Catacombs, a chapbook of poems and essays, throughout a one-year return to Jamaica following her commencement from Bennington. It was launched by Argos Books in 2011. In September 2016, she launched her debut assortment of poems, Cannibal, by way of College of Nebraska Press.
