Whitcoulls Recommends: The Comeback Code and How to Say Babylon

The Comeback Code by Jake Bailey. Jake came to national prominence when, only a few days before he was due to make the end of year speech as Head Boy at Christchurch Boys’ High, he was diagnosed with a deadly aggressive cancer – and made the speech anyway. This is his second book – after living through such adversity he then had a lot of questions and studied psychology to look for answers – and in this book he shares his experience and knowledge, providing insights and mechanisms for other people facing major setbacks to help them through it.

How to Say Babylon by Safiyah Sinclair.  She was the daughter of a radical Rastafarian in Jamaica, who was obsessed with keeping his girls away from the “unclean” world, which they referred to as Babylon. He was a brutal, difficult father and she had a tough childhood, but she also had the soul of a poet which is what she wanted to become (and eventually did). This is an extraordinary memoir about those early years and then finally being able to find her voice and the courage she needed to break free from her father. I think fans of Tara Westover’s Educated will love this as much as I did. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Ab Joan Mackenzie joins me now to talk books. Good morning, Hello.
I'm really pleased that you're going to talk about Jake
Bailey's book The Comeback Code this morning. We had Jake
on the show a couple of weeks ago and I
had a huge response to his interview. You know, he's
twenty seven, he's articulate, he has life experience and a

(00:31):
huge amount of learnt experience, you know, and knowledge about
what he talks about, which is resilience. And you know,
this book kind of fell into my lap as my
first child was heading off to university. Lots of his
friends were going, everybody was coping with it differently, and
I felt like going, I just want to hand out

(00:51):
this book to every cad and go everything's going to
be okay, just read this.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah. I think that's absolutely right. As you say, he
has been thinking deeply about adversity, particularly as it affects
young people, and watch they can be given to help
them to get through tough times. And like you, I
think this is a really important book because I think
it speaks to a group of people who don't easily

(01:17):
find the written tools to help them through things. There's
a lot out on the market, and a lot of
it is aimed at older people, but he speaks their language,
and he writes in a way that is easy to
read and easy to understand.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
I still got a lot out of it, you know,
Like for me, it was kind of like, Okay, I
kind of knew that, but actually that's a really good reminder.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah. So he's developed something which he's called the four
S model, which I think you know about, which is
all about slowing down, salvaging the good from the bad,
streamlining things, and standing alongside, which is about calling on
your family and your friends and your community when you
need them, and knowing how to go about that. And
he devotes a chapter to each one, explaining them with

(01:55):
encouraging ideas of ways to manage your thought processes even
in the most dire of circumstances. And he is perfectly
entitled to do this because he's been there. A lot
of it, I will say, I think is common sense.
But when you're faced with something so difficult or perhaps
so terrible, common sense can be the first thing out

(02:16):
the window. And if you can take this book and
use it as a reference point at times like that,
it will be worth its weight in gold.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
No.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
I completely agree, ah, Sophia Sinclair. Oh, I said that correctly.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
I call it Sophia. But sure, okay, Sofia Sinclair. The
book is called How to Say Babylon, and I loved it.
I'll start by saying, if anybody is listening who read
the book Educated by Tara Westover, then I think that
you would love this one. It's about young Sophia who
grew up in Jamaica as the child of a radical Rastafarian. Now,

(02:51):
I'd always had this idea in my head that Jamaica
was full of Rastafarians, and you know, that's what they
were all about. But actually that's not the case at all.
Most of the people on the island didn't like the Rastafarians,
and so they.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Really wonderful generalization there.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
So there really were a thing part. And her father
was obsessed with the fact that he needed to keep
his two daughters away from the unclean world, which he
referred to as Babylon, which is where the title comes from.
And he was brutal and difficult. She had a very
difficult childhood in the same way that Tara Westover did.

(03:25):
And this is a book about a young woman with
the soul of a poet, and all she wanted to
be was to become a poet, and she did. She's
now a highly acclaimed poet in America. And she found
eventually the voice of the courage to stand up to
her father. And I cannot imagine how difficult that must
have been. And she's gone on now to forge this

(03:45):
new life for herself. But it's an astonishing story and
very well written.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
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