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Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi

Start date: February 5, 2023

Finish date: March 1, 2023

Discussion: Country and Territories

Why we're reading this: Countries/Territories = Ghana

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
[close] Countries/Territories = Ghana

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

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Country and Territories

A Dangerous Place (March 2023)
By Mariah Roze · 1 post · 6 views

last updated Mar 04, 2023 01:57PM

Homegoing (February 2023)
By Mariah Roze · 3 posts · 18 views

last updated Feb 06, 2023 01:39PM

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What Members Thought

Jul 22, 2016 Barbara rated it really liked it

In the mid-1700s Effia was the town beauty in the British-run Gold Coast village of west Africa.

Though Effia hoped to marry the local chief her mother - who regularly beat and abused Effia - managed to marry her off to James Collins, an English officer who lived in the Gold Coast Castle and ran the local slave trade.

As it turns out Effia's real mother was a housegirl who'd been impregnated by Effia's father.

The housegirl ran off to a different village and had another daughter named Esi.

Esi was ...more

74 likes · Like · see review

Jul 22, 2016 Stacey rated it it was amazing

This is easily my favorite read of 2017.

Over the span of many generations, we follow the families of two half sisters. I was gobsmacked by the writing and the weaving of the characters and a necklace passed down through generations into the story. I'm breathless and at a loss for words. A novel like this doesn't come by very often, but when it does, take the time to let it soak in and relish it. ...more

41 likes · Like · see review

Aug 11, 2024 Wendy rated it really liked it

Shelves: 3500-2024, aug-24

A debut novel about race, history, ancestry, love and time, depicting the course of two sisters torn apart in 18th century Africa through to the present day.
At times it was difficult to follow the generational stories with the multitude of characters but the family tree was helpful.
Heartbreaking violence and despair yet educational.

9 likes · Like · see review

Jul 30, 2016 Chris Blocker rated it really liked it

In Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi takes an unconventional approach to a novel and does it well. From its start in Ghana, Homegoing begins with two half-sisters and follows their descendants through seven generations. Each chapter reads like its own short story; ties to the previous generation are sometimes barely visible and so each must stand on its own. That said, this novel reads in many ways like a collection of interconnected short stories. And like any collection, some stories are stronger than othe ...more

5 likes · Like · see review

Sep 17, 2020 Melissa Rochelle rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-2020

beautifully weaves together two branches of a family tree beginning in Ghana and crossing the occean to North America multiple times.

2 likes · Like · see review

Jan 03, 2017 Christina rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, fiction, historical-fiction, historical, cultural-africa

This is a wonderful book! It is almost like a collection of short stories; however, each story is deeply intertwined where you feel and see with your eyes the intricate web of ancestry that Africans and African American people all collectively share. We have been stolen from Africa... and every one of us is somehow deeply connected and interwoven with history in Africa. We come from royalty!

It's unnerving to read how the British came and plundered our lands. Sowed seeds of greed and dissent int This is a wonderful book! It is almost like a collection of short stories; however, each story is deeply intertwined where you feel and see with your eyes the intricate web of ancestry that Africans and African American people all collectively share. We have been stolen from Africa... and every one of us is somehow deeply connected and interwoven with history in Africa. We come from royalty!

It's unnerving to read how the British came and plundered our lands. Sowed seeds of greed and dissent into our villages to think that more money and material things mattered more than human lives. The story of how mothers gave up their young children so that they would not become slaves to be sold... and then fast forward the story to today in how slavery is still very real... the prison pipeline is a true reality for many African American men and women. The drug wars, the segregation, the racism, the inferiority complex, the white power-hungry men who lord over black women and men to get what they want because of a skin color.

Reading this book makes you want to know who and where you come from... because you know you come from Africa. This quote was powerful and very true... "We can't go back to something we ain't never been to in the first place. It ain't ours anymore. This is." It is a shame that we can't go back and claim our mother land because we don't know it... they don't know us... and we have been lost without our culture, we have been stolen without our true identity... fighting for a place in this land called America, that was never ours... even though we built it from the ground up with our blood, sweat, tears, and deaths of all of our ancestors... We can't go back... since we have nothing to go back to... but reading this makes me wonder, "where did my people come from?" Are they from Ghana? Did they speak Twi or some other African dialect? I want to pull up ancestry.com like for real and find my people right now! That's how I felt reading this book.

One quote that is very popular: "There should be no room in your life for regret. If in the moment of doing you felt clarity, you felt certainty, then why feel regret later?" This should be a life lesson to be learned and passed down.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I would recommend it to others. This is something that you give as gifts because everyone should feel this book inside of them and know that we have more to us than what we can see... our ancestors fought and died for us, and we should not live our lives in vain. ...more

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Mar 14, 2017 Katrisa rated it it was amazing

I wasn't sure how well the author could pull off a story that spans a couple centuries in a book this length, but she does it beautifully. I really enjoyed this read - one of my favorites I have read this year. ...more

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