Book Review: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

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.

I read this book as part of a challenge organized by my book club. Homegoing was read to fulfill the prompt “A book set in Africa.”

This was an ambitious book from a research perspective. The story follows two branches of the same family, whose origins lie three hundred years ago in Ghana. It starts with two half sisters who have different fates, one sold to slavery and shipped to America, while the other stays in her home country, married to an Englishman.

I found it incredibly interesting but also disturbing how this family evolved, shaped by the white man in different and horrendous ways. It was an eye-opening and educational experience, and I believe this book is a must-read for anyone who is a little bit curious about why we need movements about #BlackLivesMatter and better diversity policies everywhere.

Even though this book is ambitious in that it follows these two family branches for hundreds of years, I would have liked it if, in addition to being broad, the story were also deep. We only get short chapters for each of the many characters, and we never get to know them beyond a superficial level. I usually enjoy books with fully fleshed characters, but that wasn’t the case here. It was also easy to get lost, were it not for the family tree.

I listened to the audio version of this book, which didn’t include the mentioned family tree, but it was easy enough to find it online. I thought the narration was well done.

lomeraniel

My name is Elena. Since I was a little child I loved science fiction and fantasy, and I can’t resist a good novel. In 2015, while wait I started to listen to audiobooks and I discovered the pleasure in being able to read while doing my daily tasks, so there’s always an audiobook playing on my phone. If you see me with my Bluetooth headphones on, please be gentle, I get easily startled.

I live with my boyfriend, which I met during my six-year stay in Belgium, four cockatiels, eight lovebirds, and a hamster in Madrid, Spain; and I like to spend my free time knitting and sewing while listening to audiobooks.