Homegoing
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.
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Community Reviews
Just, wow.
I have a thing for epic sagas. Edward Rutherford's New York is literally one of my all time favorite books, but I think I've found it's match here.
Homegoing was endearing, but also very sad at times. It made you truly love the characters from this family who were ripped apart by time and circumstance.
The author writes beautifully, easily bringing the locations to life in your mind. You move from the Gold Coast of Africa and the terrifying yet beautiful Cape Coast Castle through time to America and Stanford University. The writing easily places you within the story without being too much. I love me some Rutherford, as I mentioned before, but the man can be long winded. Gyasi is able to describe the setting well enough for your mind to be there but not take it so far that you want to hang yourself because you now have a description of every tree and cloud.
I will not only re-read this a million times, I will also recommend it and gift it to people at times. That's how you know a book wowed me, if I am pushing it on you like a bible salesman then you can bet I truly loved it.
Gyasi storytelling abilities are beyond phenomenal. The details and the history behind groups of people was amazing and I truly enjoyed how she went back and forth going down the split of a lineage.
I did get overwhelmed at a point and took a break and this may have been the first book where it took me 2-3 weeks to read but I am glad I finished it.
The story is beautiful and makes me question my identity and where I can from and who I could’ve been in terms of these stories. I found myself angry because of my relation to being the black American who felt why would I go back to what I don’t know but also a sadness of how much was taken from my family in the past.
But well done!
I did get overwhelmed at a point and took a break and this may have been the first book where it took me 2-3 weeks to read but I am glad I finished it.
The story is beautiful and makes me question my identity and where I can from and who I could’ve been in terms of these stories. I found myself angry because of my relation to being the black American who felt why would I go back to what I don’t know but also a sadness of how much was taken from my family in the past.
But well done!
At first, I struggled with the story's progression as it felt unrealistic that paths could cross in this way, but I think it was also cathartic to imagine this type of reconciliation and full circle moment.
Over all, it is beautifully written, and I didn't want to put it down.
I'm surprised I finished this book in 10 days. It seemed longer, and at the same time, I feel like I didn't spend that much time reading it. Maybe it was because of the order of the chapters, each one following alternately the descendants of both sisters. The story for each of them was condensed into moments of importance, where the rest melted into the background, which turned decades into steps in time. I did feel like each chapter was a bit too short, as I got invested in every single character's journey, and I wanted to know more about how they came to be, their relationships with the previous generation, etc. Something that was not lost on me was how as time progressed, each generation of descendants lived longer and stayed put longer than the generation before, and toward the end, we could see how grandparents had a chance of meeting and having a relationship with their grandchildren.
To read this book (which, like most of the books I read, are digital and I read on my kindle) I had to copy the family tree from the first page on a sheet of paper that I carried with me wherever I took the book, just so I could follow its branches. Had I worked a bit harder to keep up with the characters, I would have also carried a map with the locations mentioned in the story. The only thing that wasn't really mentioned in the book was the timeline. I had trouble positioning each character in a specific year, to be able to understand the historic events happening around them. There were some clues, like the mention of the abolition of slavery, wars, presidents, etc., but sometimes the timeline didn't seem right or it was too vague, and I had trouble picturing the characters at the right age or at the right place in time. This vagueness was probably intentional, but its purpose was lost on me, someone who needs to put most things in a labeled box and have it all organised.
None of this means I didn't enjoy this book, though. I did. So much.
This story, or compound of stories, shed, for me, light on the slave trade and how the British and the Americans took advantage of African history in the making, their traditions, their relationships, their communities, and their building of them. Understanding this part of history was a huge part of why I liked this book. It was unexpected and brilliantly explained throughout the story.
I, as a latina woman in my 30s that was raised with hints of European and Ukrainian heritage, also experienced the feeling of being a spectator peeking behind the curtain, like looking at events take place that weren't for me to look at. I even felt like I was invading a place and a time where I didn't belong. I am ultimately glad I got to experience it through this book. I feel like I gained knowledge about a place, a time, and people I wouldn't have otherwise.
To read this book (which, like most of the books I read, are digital and I read on my kindle) I had to copy the family tree from the first page on a sheet of paper that I carried with me wherever I took the book, just so I could follow its branches. Had I worked a bit harder to keep up with the characters, I would have also carried a map with the locations mentioned in the story. The only thing that wasn't really mentioned in the book was the timeline. I had trouble positioning each character in a specific year, to be able to understand the historic events happening around them. There were some clues, like the mention of the abolition of slavery, wars, presidents, etc., but sometimes the timeline didn't seem right or it was too vague, and I had trouble picturing the characters at the right age or at the right place in time. This vagueness was probably intentional, but its purpose was lost on me, someone who needs to put most things in a labeled box and have it all organised.
None of this means I didn't enjoy this book, though. I did. So much.
This story, or compound of stories, shed, for me, light on the slave trade and how the British and the Americans took advantage of African history in the making, their traditions, their relationships, their communities, and their building of them. Understanding this part of history was a huge part of why I liked this book. It was unexpected and brilliantly explained throughout the story.
I, as a latina woman in my 30s that was raised with hints of European and Ukrainian heritage, also experienced the feeling of being a spectator peeking behind the curtain, like looking at events take place that weren't for me to look at. I even felt like I was invading a place and a time where I didn't belong. I am ultimately glad I got to experience it through this book. I feel like I gained knowledge about a place, a time, and people I wouldn't have otherwise.
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