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.
My Review of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.
This is a historical fiction that tells a multi generational story of a family from Ghana to America.
Effia is the daughter of Baaba and Cobbe, and while reading this book, I wanted to infiltrate into the story to give Baaba a dirty slap because why is she so cruel to her own daughter?
She doesn't love Effia and she doesn't do anything to hide it, so Effia has to make do with what love she can get from her father's end.
She does everything within her power to win her mother over, but Baaba would not budge, she simply tosses Effia to the side and suffocates her with more cruelty.
I didn't know the reason for Baaba's hostility towards Effia, till I progress in the book and learn the reason for her wickedness to the young girl.
When Effia turns twelve, she grows into a beautiful woman, who catches the fancy of the next chief Abeeku. Abeeku wants to marry her, but only when she becomes a woman, when she starts menstruating.
So he's patient and will wait till whenever that time comes. But Baaba has other plans. She gives Effia a palm frond to always stick inside her vagina to check for blood, and threatens her not to tell anyone when the blood comes.
When Effia finally starts menstruating at the age of fifteen, her mother does everything within her power for her to be married off to James Collins, the newly appointed governor of the Cape Coast and a white man.
Baaba gives Effia a stone pendant and she goes to live with her husband in the castle. There, she realizes that some women in the dungeon are traded as slaves.
However, Esi, Effia's half sister is among the women trapped in the dungeon. Unbeknownst to Effia, Baaba is not her biological mother, but a woman called Maame, their house help who runs away the day she was born.
But she later finds out. On the day Esi is captured, Maame also leaves her a stone pendant for her, but she loses it on the dungeon.
This is where the story progresses. These two women goes on to birth children who birth children and the story follows these seven generations.
One side, Effia's, remains in Africa, but the other is brought to America through slavery. While Effia retains her black stone which tells a generational story of the hardships the family has hone through over the years, Esi loses hers and so her generation finds it difficult to really trace and know their history.
The generations of these sisters face tremendous challenges. For Effia's descendants who remain in Africa, colonization deals with them, making it difficult for them to live freely, and also trapping them so they're unable to escape.
It doesn't also get better for Esi's descendants as well, because they have to suffer from racism and are the first to be targeted when any form of crime is being committed.
However the climax of this story is when the final descendants of both sisters meet at Stanford.
Marjorie and Marcus are unaware of their similar backgrounds, but enjoy each other's company.
They finally help each other overcome their generational trauma, and when Marjorie gives Marcus Effia's pendant, they reunite and make peace with themselves.
I love that this explores really sensitive and important themes, like Africans' involvement in slave trade, and the consequences of colonialism, colorism, segregation and racism.
It tells a really brave story of how Africa existed in the 1770s and how the skin color affects even the employability of an individual.
The story is powerful, no doubt, but I found it confusing while reading it. It is told from the perspectives of so many characters that sometimes I become confused about who is who.
I honestly found that technique boring at some point, but I surged on regardless. I highly recommend this book, as it is quite an interesting read.
I love the narrative and descriptive techniques involved in it and I'll rate it as 4/5. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Have you read the book? What do you think about it? Please share your thoughts with me in the comment section.
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