Homegoing

by Yaa Gyasi

Her trick is to make him think that he is king of the bush, but what does a king matter? Really, she is king and queen and everything in between.

At night, Esi dreamed that if they all cried in unison, the mud would turn to river and they could be washed away into the Atlantic.

The tops of the trees looked as though they were brushing the sky, and Esi wondered why leaves were green instead of blue.

Weakness is treating someone as though they belong to you. Strength is knowing that everyone belongs to themselves.”

“The white man’s god is just like the white man. He thinks he is the only god, just like the white man thinks he is the only man.

Wow

Jo had worked hard so that his children wouldn’t have to inherit his fear, but now he wished they had just the tiniest morsel of it.

If in the moment of doing you felt clarity, you felt certainty, then why feel regret later?”

From her hut, where Abena had finally risen off of the hard ground and dusted off her knees and back, she knew she would not wait.

Big questions like, if God was so big, so powerful, why did he need the white man to bring him to them? Why could he not tell them himself, make his presence known as he had in the days written about in the Book, with bush fires and dead men walking?

Besides, if we go to the white man for school, we will just learn the way the white man wants us to learn. We will come back and build the country the white man wants us to build. One that continues to serve them. We will never be free.”

“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.”

The woman was shouting. “We thank God for all of his mercies! We thank him that he is alive. Our God, he does not sleep-oh!” She danced around the room. “Old Lady, God has brought you your son! Old Lady, God has brought you your son so you do not have to go to Asamando without seeing him. Old Woman, come and see!” she yelled.

Aww

often. He was still amazed by it. Not by the fear he’d felt throughout the day, when the woman who was no more than a stranger to him had dragged him farther and farther from home, but by the fullness of love and protection he’d felt later, when his family had finally found him. Not the being lost, but the being found. It was the same feeling he got whenever he saw Marjorie. Like she had, somehow, found him.

My grandma used to say, ‘A blind man don’t call us crazy for seeing.’