A girl innocently smiling back at me with her deep chocolate brown eyes. She has a softness about her as a curiously hesitant expression paints her face. Her hair is loosely
tied in two pigtails on the sides of her head, emulating her carefree and childlike spirit. She wears a loose long sleeve and baby pink ballet flats. The Teton Mountains touch the sky behind her, and vibrant grass tickles her legs. Here she is frozen in time. Framed, hanging on the wall. She is familiar enough to recognize, yet I am unsure I claim her as myself. She is a version of who I once was. She is not me—at least not entirely.
While confronting my own self-image, I am reminded of the first moment I became body conscious. I realized my body was a representation of me, but not actually who I was to my core. Bodies are just vessels for our souls to live in during our time on earth, which was always somewhat of an unsettling topic for me to wrap my head around. The first time I saw my reflection in the mirror in a different light than I had previously was when I was about ten years
old. I stood in front of a mirror in my parents’ bedroom and for the first time I attempted to look at myself through the eyes of a stranger. I tried to imagine how the outside world pictured me instead of how I saw myself. I was hit with a wave of self judgement. I no longer envisioned myself as a walking goddess but as a regular seeming, slightly pudgy girl. It felt like I was outside my physical body, staring at my face from a distance.
In the memoir How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair, she writes, “I was determined to write myself back into the frame” (Sinclair 315). This powerful quote urgently insists on reclaiming the self despite the outside factors that distort your own image. Everyday people make assumptions and projections about you. Sinclair wants to take back her own power and story by writing herself back into the frame. In her memoir, the struggle for self-identification proves challenging especially when outside factors like patriarchal control, religion, and familial expectations weigh heavy on you. However, the toughest battle may come from within. The internal voices that question your very existence.
A moment when Sinclair feels self-estranged is when she has difficulty understanding who she is other than an extension or shadow of her strong-willed father. Sinclair writes, “Who am I? I wanted to say. Who am I to you now? But his gaze was fixed forward on a future I could not see, as I scuttled along behind him, my bare toes sludged black with the mud. I had to follow. Where he went, I went, his thoughts molding my thoughts, until I became the perfect shadow” (Sinclair 127-128). This internal dialogue relates to the dynamic topic of identity in the book Reading Autobiography Now by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography Now defines identity as writers making “themselves known by acts of identification and, by implication, differentiation” (Smith & Watson 64). Identity is not set in stone, but rather it is a shifting concept that is shaped by others in power. For Sinclair’s case, her identity is largely impacted by feeling like she was a mere shadow of her father and family. In this moment, she shrinks herself to a fractured sense of identity, as opposed to claiming her own agency.
Another moment in How to Say Babylon that highlights Sinclair’s journey of self-recognition is when she examines the roles of men and women in Rastafari in relation to one another. Sinclair questions, “But what about an empress? Could she do what she wanted too? (Sinclair 75). Throughout the memoir, she questions how much power and agency she has in a system that was designed to diminish women. This idea relates to the section in Reading Autobiography Now titled “Identity as Difference and Commonality.” The book says, “Identities materialize within collectives and out of the culturally marked differences that permeate symbolic interactions within and between collectivities. One is a “woman” in relation to a “man” Smith & Watson 64). Sinclair grapples with identifying herself as a woman and what that means in the context of Rastafarian culture.
In her memoir, Sinclair engages with photographs as a media to reclaim her narrative and acknowledge herself. A photograph is a record of a snapshot moment, deliberately framing what is pictured and what is left out. The times Sinclair studies pictures of her younger self, she is hit with similar feelings I have when performing the same action. She notices the tension between who she was in the photograph and who she now understands herself to be. She also acknowledges how others viewed her and how she wishes she was seen. This process is a comprehensive method to reconcile with one’s identity and beliefs about oneself. The view of self through pictures and memories are dynamic in the sense that there is no one pure, true representation of who you were in the past as we reconstruct and deconstruct ourselves through retrospection. That is why autobiography is so beautiful because it is an active way to reclaim power over one’s story and present your identity in a newfound light. By writing herself back into the frame, Sinclair sits in the driver seat of her life and does not leave room for others to define her.
When I look back at the photograph of me in the Teton mountains, I acknowledge that the girl staring back at me is questioning who she will become. Maybe she awaits me to write her back into frame and identify her in this snapshot moment. As I revisit this image, I rearrange the frame and recognize the expansiveness of her narrative. She is a part of my story, but not the whole bit. So, I let her sit with her curiosity and write to her as the person I am today.
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