Sinclair's Cannibal opens with lines spoken by Caliban, an indigenous man enslaved by Prospero in William Shakespeare's play, The Tempest.

In an essay for Poetry, Sinclair explains that she first read The Tempest as a teenager in Jamaica, and at that time identified with Miranda, daughter of the oppressive Prospero.

[3] In subsequent readings, after Sinclair moved to the United States, she began to liken her experience of exile to that of Caliban's.

In Cannibal, Sinclair charts her personal experience of exile from her strict upbringing in Jamaica through her immigration to the United States.

As she explains: "The very name Caliban is a Shakespearean anagram of the word cannibal, the English variant of the Spanish word canibal, which originated from caribal, a reference to the native Carib people in the West Indies..."[3][13] Sinclair's debut memoir, How to Say Babylon, was published by Simon & Schuster in the US in October 2023.

[15] Reviewing it in The New York Times, Quiara Alegría Hudes wrote: "For its sheer lusciousness of prose, the book's a banquet.