What gives some people the courage to risk or sacrifice almost everything for freedom and decency? Two very different memoirs might help explain. Both are about unwavering courage.
I just ordered two books, and each one – two gripping and important memoirs – tells the story of women who risked everything for art, honor, freedom, and what it means to be a patriot.
One is the recollections of former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, whose once glowing political life was shattered by voters, politicians, congressional powers, colleagues, liars, cowards, and traitors.
The other comes from a Jamaican poet. She is living far from Cheney’s world in Jamaica but also calling on the most bottomless reservoirs of courage to escape her persecution for a better life. Cheney is still fighting. Safiya Sinclair got her life back and then some.
The courage of women struck me. We rarely read about it but will see it repeatedly in the coming years. I admit to dreading Cheney’s book – politics is painful in America – I eagerly awaited Sinclair’s; the reviews are irresistible.
Cheney, almost single-handedly in her party, refused to accept Donald Trump’s lies about the 2024 election or slithering out his responsibility for the assaults on the U.S. Capital on that January 6.
Her story – Oath Honor – is one of a deeply troubled political party caught in the grip of a would-be dictator who seems determined to take our democracy apart by any means necessary. Cheney has devoted her life to exposing this man and stopping him from ever “getting anywhere near the White House again.” She insisted on the truth, which cost her almost everything she desired.
I’m convinced and haven’t even finished the book, even though it makes me angry and troubled. It isn’t Armageddon, but it is severe and sad. Her book leaves no doubt about the truth.
Cheney is an iconic loner hero in the very best tradition of American politics. History will treat her a lot better than her constituents or the Republican Party.
Her book is long, political, depressing, and almost tragic in its detailed and persuasive account of President Trump’s corruption, dishonesty, and betrayal. This is a hero’s story from beginning to end, but we don’t yet know Cheney’s ending. It’s an important book.
Sinclair’s memoir is different. We do know the ending.
I’ve just read parts of the Cheney book, and I will take it slowly; it makes my heart sink and my stomach fall, as does the news. There is plenty of juicy revelation and detail. Still, it is also the chronicle of an American tragedy, how timid and fearful politicians and enthusiastic voters tossed some of our most cherished beliefs and traditions out the window.
Cheney is a classic and iconic American hero, much in the spirit of the founding fathers, many of whom risked their lives, homes, and wealth to fight for a new idea called freedom, something Trump and many of his followers have come to hate and seek to destroy.
The other book I just got is also a memoir – How To Say Babylon – the story of a young Jamaican woman named Safiya Sinclair – now an award-winning American poet – and her brutal and sometimes frightening struggle with her father, a militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, an outspoken reggae magician in Jamaica who was obsessed with his daughter’s purity.
He believed the corrupting influences of the Western world would lead to what his sect called Babylon. He feared Safiya and her sisters would become corrupt, impure, and immoral.
To keep his daughters pure, he controlled every aspect of their lives, sometimes brutally and violently. The restrictions he put on Safiya were awful and often cruel.
The women in her family were forced to wear clothes that covered their arms and knees, jewelry and makeup were prohibited, and they were forbidden to cut their dreadlocks.
They were allowed no friends. Safiy’s mother, while loyal to her father, slipped her daughters the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched onto with all of her strength – it transformed her life and gave her strength.
Safira never gave in to her violent and volatile father. Like Cheney, she is a role model for anyone, male or female, living under the thumb of abusive domination.
Women know her story all too well – arrogant, ignorant, and abusive men – devoting their lives to dominating and controlling women. You don’t need to be a Rastafari to know that story; you only have to live in the new America in 2023.
I can’t say Chenyey’s story will have a happy ending, but I believe it will, and we will owe her a great deal.
If her story does end happily, she will be one of the primary reasons why our democracy has been saved.
She has become a fearless lie-buster and patriot. I owe her getting the book and reading it, as painful as it might be. I can’t imagine how she has summoned the strength to face down death threats, rejection, all kinds of abuse, and an ocean of lies and cowards. She is, without question, the stuff heroes are made of. I hope her outcome is a good one.
I can say that Safay’s story has a happy ending. Her life is a victory for the struggle of yet another woman who could not submit to domination, abuse, and unthinking male domination in the name of yet another religion and holiness.
I haven’t finished either book, I’ll get to How To Say Babylon first, I have not b een able to far to put it down. Cheney’s book is big, fat, and hard to take, so I will read it in pieces and chunks. I know the story but am amazed by the details, a reckoning for cowards and liars.
Such honesty and courage are brutal to find in Cheney’s disgraced party. But she has kept the flame of patriotism and justice alive, sometimes single-handedly, and she has my gratitude and admiration. I want her book on my shelves.
The book is for history and will be read and admired for hundreds of years.
Not even Ron DeSantis and his book-banning supporters can get it banned. And there’s Sifiay Sinclair, a hero two.
