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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)
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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 11, 2016 Maya B rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, historical, 1st-time-reading-this-author, africa, debut-novel

BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN! 14 characters. 300 pages. Epic family saga. Even though each chapter was about a different character, each chapter seemed to melt right into the next. The story flowed so well. Great weekend read when you have no distractions. Each chapter was short, but it was long enough to know the characters. I was glad for the family tree in the front of the book because I did find myself flipping back to it to keep up with the characters. I hope someone makes this book into a tv series ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Jan 15, 2017 Jeanne rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-women, read-around-the-world, read-2017, african-african-american, historical-fiction

Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi, is a series of stories following two sisters – Effia and Esi – torn apart by slavery, one to marry a white slaver, another sold into slavery by a rival tribe and shipped to the US. The sisters were separated much earlier, when Effia's mother "ran away into the fire" on the night she was born – and Effia was raised by her father's resentful first wife. Esi was Effia's mother's second daughter.

Homegoing's narrative switches back and forth between a single member of each f Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi, is a series of stories following two sisters – Effia and Esi – torn apart by slavery, one to marry a white slaver, another sold into slavery by a rival tribe and shipped to the US. The sisters were separated much earlier, when Effia's mother "ran away into the fire" on the night she was born – and Effia was raised by her father's resentful first wife. Esi was Effia's mother's second daughter.

Homegoing's narrative switches back and forth between a single member of each family of each generation, ending at the turn of the 21st century. How do their parents' decisions serve to inform and contextualize their behaviors? How do their parents' reputations – and behaviors – change with time?

Homegoing explores both connection and separation. Separated sisters (Effia and Esi) "are like a woman and her reflection, doomed to stay on opposite sides of the pond”
(Locs. 684-685). On the other hand, the joining of a man and a woman was also the joining of two families. Ancestors, whole histories, came with the act, but so did sins and curses
(Loc. 381). These ancestors and histories, sins and curses, are the warp of this book. Fire, water, color, luck, suicide, race, color, exploitation etc. are the weft, threading their way through Gyasi's narrative, although with different effects in different generations.

Yaw, a 20th century Ghanaian history teacher, argued that history is storytelling, told by those in power. He observed,

“We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture” (Locs. 3847-3850).

Nyami is able to offer a more nuanced story, as her narrative extends across seven generations; her thesis becomes clearer as Marcus (from the next US generation) considered the problems he had writing his dissertation in Sociology:

How could he talk about Great-Grandpa H’s story without also talking about his grandma Willie and the millions of other black people who had migrated north, fleeing Jim Crow? And if he mentioned the Great Migration, he’d have to talk about the cities that took that flock in. He’d have to talk about Harlem. And how could he talk about Harlem without mentioning his father’s heroin addiction— the stints in prison, the criminal record? And if he was going to talk about heroin in Harlem in the ’60s, wouldn’t he also have to talk about crack everywhere in the ’80s? And if he wrote about crack, he’d inevitably be writing, too, about the “war on drugs.” And if he started talking about the war on drugs, he’d be talking about how nearly half of the black men he grew up with were on their way either into or out of what had become the harshest prison system in the world. And if he talked about why friends from his hood were doing five-year bids for possession of marijuana when nearly all the white people he’d gone to college with smoked it openly every day, he’d get so angry that he’d slam the research book on the table of the beautiful but deadly silent Lane Reading Room of Green Library of Stanford University. And if he slammed the book down, then everyone in the room would stare and all they would see would be his skin and his anger, and they’d think they knew something about him, and it would be the same something that had justified putting his great-grandpa H in prison, only it would be different too, less obvious than it once was. (Locs. 4923-4934).

In Homegoing, everything is connected; it lays out many "clues" early in the book and its first chapters deserve a rereading. As does the whole of Homegoing. And then another, just for the richness of the story.
...more

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Dec 31, 2016 Alana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: educational, foreign-culture, historical-fiction, christians-should-read

Wow, what an incredible book to round out the reading year of 2016! It's not often that you run across such a gem of book, full of horrific human tragedy and suffering, yet so beautiful and full of hope. It encompasses the full breadth of human beings' capacity for evil and good to one another, all through the generations of two branches of one family. It's heartbreaking, but the beauty of the human spirit is captured so well that the tragedy does not overwhelm the whole story and in the end, th Wow, what an incredible book to round out the reading year of 2016! It's not often that you run across such a gem of book, full of horrific human tragedy and suffering, yet so beautiful and full of hope. It encompasses the full breadth of human beings' capacity for evil and good to one another, all through the generations of two branches of one family. It's heartbreaking, but the beauty of the human spirit is captured so well that the tragedy does not overwhelm the whole story and in the end, there is a sense of redemption, of hope for better in the future.

The author is from Ghana but grew up in Alabama, and I don't know whether that was the intention of the book, but it has the feeling of imagining back through the possibilities of the generations, to what could have taken place, and how we could have all ended up here, with these results. Really, though, it could encompass anyone. We are all a product of our parents, where we are born, where we are raised, what circumstances formed us in our early and later years, and, above all, our choices. And our choices are what goes the most to shaping the next generation, and all those who come after us.

I have so often become overwhelmed with fiction about slavery in the American South and all the repercussions, and despite the ongoing political and social issues we still face as a result of it, I'd gotten so burned out on the literature about it that I frankly just didn't care about it anymore, and wanted to move on. I still feel that way about a lot of books, because I don't find them all helpful, but this one tells the side of the story that continued in Africa, as well as the U.S., and does not go into the detail of every single life, but rather a snapshot of each generation, and how each caused the next and how the story continued and how all are connected. Seeing the pieces of how one action or one group or one law or.... can effect the course of history to countless generations is both awe-inspiring and frightening in its weight of responsibility. Our ancestors have made this world what it is, and each generation--each individual--has the responsibility for how it continues forward.

This one will stay in the back of my mind for a long time after the individual characters have faded in their details. This book was both a challenge and yet a joy to read and I would challenge anyone to read it with an open mind, regardless of whatever background you come from, whether socio-economic, ethnic, or religious.
5/5 ...more

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Mar 10, 2018 Heather rated it liked it

3.5/5 stars. This isn't a popular opinion but this book was difficult to read. It took me forever because I just never connected with the overall story and the format. However, I did enjoy many of the stories and the writing was wonderful...it just wasn't enough to hold my interest over other books. I do think this is an important book and I'm glad I read it, but it was difficult to read. ...more

1 like · Like · see review