I Was A Child of Dread
Notes from America with Kai Wright
WNYC Studios
4.4 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 October 2023
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In a new memoir, How to Say Babylon, 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. This week, 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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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So you can see that you row up in a strict family. |
| 0:06.4 | So with the Haitian community and raising children, it's a lot much more restricted and stuff |
| 0:11.6 | like that. |
| 0:12.6 | That's more of a sense of urgency as an adult. |
| 0:15.6 | Like I can make decisions easily because I was a lot to make my own decisions from when |
| 0:22.8 | I was young. |
| 0:23.8 | I'm Nigerian. |
| 0:24.8 | I was raised in a Christian home, but then it's various tricks. |
| 0:29.8 | I think that was for good because you know what, I became very disciplined. |
| 0:34.4 | So I grew up in Philadelphia, mixed black family, but I'm African. |
| 0:41.8 | I kind of grew up with my culture. |
| 0:43.6 | I didn't get to explore what I could do with my life as a child. |
| 0:48.2 | I said, I'm not doing this no more. |
| 0:59.8 | It's Notes from America. |
| 1:08.8 | I'm Kai Wright. |
| 1:10.8 | Welcome to the show. |
| 1:12.8 | I'm talking this week with Sophia Sinclair. |
| 1:15.8 | She's an award-winning poet and essayist who teaches creative writing at Arizona State |
| 1:20.8 | University and who grew up in Jamaica in a household governed by Rastafari teachings |
| 1:26.8 | under the strict rule of her father. |
| 1:29.6 | Rastafari is much more and much different than how it shows up in pop culture as you |
| 1:36.0 | know, reggae music or as a style choice or just as an appropriated vibe in bad movies. |
... |
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