Point of View

The memoir is narrated in the first person, always from the perspective of Safiya as she explores her relationship to her faith, her father, and her homeland. All of the memories and mentions of family members and friends are tinged with Safiya’s initial perception of events and tempered with some of her present-day adjustments. The memoir is also Safiya Sinclair’s reimagination of so many childhood traumas to correct where her parents went wrong. Readers are inside Safiya’s most intimate thoughts and the interjections of what she had so often hoped to hear from her father lend a raw voice to her narration. She wrote the memoir to bear witness to her journey out of Rasta and the strength she found in her female body and experience that she had previously been taught to be ashamed of.

Whenever Safiya works to understand her...