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I haven’t done this in a while, so I might be a bit rusty. Three books have been living rent-free in my head, and I needed to get them out. I did wonder if I should share this on Substack, but to be honest, I still don’t fully get Substack. Plus, I’ve been missing my blog. Not sure if this will lead to more posts, or if this might be a one-time deal. Still. Here we are. Hiiii!

This isn’t a review per se, more sharing things I’ve been sitting with since I read How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair, First Born Girls by Bernice L. McFadden, and The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson. My thoughts aren't fully formed, but I'm putting them down here anyway because I need them gone. The first two are memoirs, and the third is autofiction/semi-autobiographical. There was also an interesting way I experienced them across different formats. I read How to Say Babylon as an e-book, First Born Girls as a physical hardback, and The Mercy Step as an audiobook narrated by the author herself.  Each format brought its own vibe, but I didn’t feel like I lost anything in the process.

I should mention trigger warnings for violence against children and women.

What connects the three books for me isn’t immediately obvious, as they are set in different countries (Jamaica, America, and England) and eras, but across all three, daughters are growing up in violent homes with violent fathers, daughters have mothers who stay or keep returning, and daughters eventually find a way out through books and literature.

In How to Say Babylon, Safiya Sinclair writes about growing up Rastafari in Jamaica, and the violence her mother, herself, and her siblings experienced at the hands of her father. One of the things I enjoyed most is how she weaves Rastafari history and its different sects, as well as the persecution Rastafari face in the community. There is something very ironic in how Sinclair shows that a religious and social movement built on raising Black consciousness and liberation from the shackles of white supremacy, at the same time, holds very heavy patriarchal ideologies towards women. Sinclair is the oldest of her parents' four children (and also the first-born daughter; I will return to that later), and her once-loving father becomes increasingly violent the older she gets and the deeper he moves into the religion. One scene involving her father, a machete, and the police being called stayed with me long after I finished reading. Sinclair also writes about how she finds literature (books and, mainly, poetry), and how writing ultimately frees her, allowing her to leave the island and, more importantly, her father.

A scene towards the end of How to Say Babylon takes place during Jamaica's Calabash Festival. Source: Jamaicans.com

In First Born Girls, Bernice L. McFadden writes about generations of first-born daughters, including her mother and eventually herself, who also gives birth to a first-born daughter. The book is set mostly in America, with McFadden mapping her own family’s journey alongside African American history, including the Great Migration north. I also loved learning about McFadden's Caribbean roots. She's Bajan on her paternal side, and her grandmother made sure she knew that part of her family as a child. McFadden also shows how women choosing complicated or abusive men can often be passed down through generations, and how even she initially followed the same pattern. Similar to Safiya Sinclair’s household, there is a father who thinks violence is what defines a home, but instead of a machete, it’s a gun that eventually comes into play. McFadden’s mother tries to leave many times, but always returns. A similar thread runs through First Born Girls, as what saves McFadden, or at least begins to, is books. This time, ones by African American women - Toni Morrison, Alice Walker. It is in finding these stories about “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people” that she gets the language to see herself, her community, and her and their stories, and why they matter.

The Migration Series, Panel No. 1 | Jacob Lawrence (between 1940 and 1941). Source: The Phillips Collection

The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson is autofiction told from the perspective of Mercy, from her birth through to her pre-teens. Her story is told in a way that felt as if a version of Mercy is hovering above, telling the story of her life as it happened, while also knowing what was coming before Mercy did herself. Her Jamaican parents came to Bradford in the UK as part of the Windrush generation, leaving children behind. They eventually had five more children in England. (Random, sidenote: across all three books, there was an interesting pattern of one son in each family, and their treatment largely being different from that of the girls, especially in How to Say Babylon and The Mercy Step. I could say more on that, but not in this post.) 

Bradford in the 1960s. Source: Telegraph and Argus

Like the previous two books, there is violence in the home, and the father doesn't spare anyone in his household. The mother tries to leave a couple of times, but returns. In one scene, there is also a father with a machete, this time ready to attack the mother. Yet, Mercy finds her own way to survive as a child. She discovers the library and falls in love with Greek mythology. Similar to the other two books, these daughters all shared a love of literature that helped save them. Here is where Mercy differs from the other two: she is the middle child, not the first-born daughter. All daughters in all three books are extremely intelligent and gifted, but Mercy’s starts from a ridiculously young age. She speaks full words at ten months old, before she could walk. 

There’s something to be said in all three books about mothers/wives staying with violent fathers/husbands, often believing it was the best for their children, especially in some cases as they initially relied on the men financially - even if all these women worked. I also found sadness in their belief they were protecting their children, when these same homes were actively destroying the daughters they loved. I am aware leaving is never easy. The books make it clear (heck, life also makes it clear), especially when children are involved, and women have limited means and assets. There is a scene in The Mercy Step where, as readers, we are reminded that the book was set in a time in England when women still needed their husband’s signature to open a bank account. 

These books left me with many things, but one I kept on thinking about was how no matter the location of the story - different parishes in Jamaica, Windrush-era Bradford in the UK, the Great Migration north in America - there is the patriarchal violence of one generation of fathers in one corner battling with the hardcore bad-assery of another generation of daughters in the other corner.

Reading them also felt close to home. I am a first-born daughter (like Safiya and Bernice) and a first-born daughter of a first-born daughter. I'm also a middle child, like Mercy. I have Caribbean, via St. Kitts, lineage on my maternal side. And like all three daughters, I escaped into books from a very young age. It is only now, looking back from an older me’s perspective, that I am realising how those very books also sparked my own lifelong love for words.