Homegoing

by Yaa Gyasi

The need to call this thing “good” and this thing “bad,” this thing “white” and this thing “black,” was an impulse that Effia did not understand. In her village, everything was everything. Everything bore the weight of everything else.

“Where’s the boy?” the Devil asked while his men tied the two of them up. “Dead,” Ness said, and she hoped her eyes had that look in them, that look that mothers got sometimes when they came back from running, having killed their children to set them free.

“People think they are coming to me for advice,” Mampanyin said, “but really, they come to me for permission.

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.”