A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.
Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the …
A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.
Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.
Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi's magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer.
--front flap
This book gripped me immediately. A wonderfully written dive into how the slave trade effected and shaped not just the Americas, but also the land the slaves came from. I was enamored in how each generation built on the tragedy and triumphs of the previous generations. I also honestly appreciated that the book wasn't the equivalent of trauma porn, with moments of joy and achievement throughout.
I remember I finished this book on my lunch break at work, and I literally gasped in joy at the ending, as I felt it was the best way that things could have ended.
This book brought me so much joy, as well as great insight into the Black experience through the years and how each historical era changed things.
I've been verbally recommending this book to everyone, and now I'll do it online too.
Not sure if I'm missing something (the reviews are all good), but the prose and character development in these linked stories offered nothing for me. The stories are connected, one generation to the next, from the history of the gold coast slave trade to modern America, but each trudges along with an aimlessness and a lack of involvement that is frustrating to read. The dialogue lacked reality, and crafted badly drawn stereotypes instead of individuals. The history of this era is more engaging and interesting to read than this is, in novel/short story form.
