In order for me to enjoy a book, I have to in some way strike a connection with the main character, whether it’s a “love ‘em” or “hate ‘em” connection, there simply has to be one. Homegoing didn’t deliver that important detail…however…that in no way takes away from the impact that the story had on me, but let’s back up for a minute. Let me start with the synopsis:
Ghana, eighteenth century: two half-sisters are born into different villages, each unaware of the other. One will marry an Englishman and lead a life of comfort in the palatial rooms of the Cape Coast Castle. The other will be captured in a raid on her village, imprisoned in the very same castle, and sold into slavery.
Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem. Yaa Gyasi’s extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed—and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.
I have a thing for slavery books—don’t ask why, I just do—and every time I read one, I ask myself at least once, “why am I doing this to myself?” Because of the emotion that the storylines invoke, knowing that this was in fact a part of my history, my husband often advises me to stop reading them, but I can’t seem to stay away.
Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing was no different in having that effect on me, so much so that I cried at the end. What’s so interesting about the book is that I couldn’t tell you any of the character’s names—none that stuck with me anyway—but I felt their pain. Every. Single. One. And there were many. Homegoing takes you on two journeys—both leaving a trail of heartbreak and legacy. One sister stays on the western shores of Africa and bares a generation of children that remain in their homeland and true to their culture. The other is forced to north America on a dreadful slave ship, barely hanging on to the memories of a home she will never see again. She also bares a generation of children who will struggle with being brought up in a foreign land that doesn’t even see them as being human.
From the throes of the Atlantic Slave Trade to present day, Homegoing will tell the stories of what many of us have endured here in America as a result of being kidnapped, tortured and stripped of our natural identities, and what our brothers and sisters—who were able to hold on to their selfhood—have encountered as a result of losing their kindred.
By the end of the book, I was left with a longing to visit the shores of the motherland and reconnect with a land and its ancestors that are buried deep within my soul. Well done, Yaa Gyasi.
