by Yaa Gyasi
One of Oprah’s Best Books of the Year, 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.
One of Oprah’s Best Books of the Year, 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.
Reviews-
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Starred review from February 1, 2016
Gyasi’s amazing debut offers an unforgettable, page-turning look at the histories of Ghana and America, as the author traces a single bloodline across seven generations, beginning with Ghanaian half-sisters Effia, who is married off to a British colonizer in the 1760s, and Esi, who is captured into the British slave-trading system around the same time. These women never meet, never know of each other’s existence, yet in alternating narratives we see their respective families swell through the eyes of slaves, wanderers, union leaders, teachers, heroin addicts, and more—these often feel like linked short stories, with each descendent receiving his or her own chapter. Esi’s descendants find themselves on the other side of the Atlantic, toiling on plantations in the American South before escaping to the North for freedom, while Effia’s offspring become intertwined in the Gold Coast slave trade, until her grandson breaks away and disappears to live a simple existence with his true love. In both America and Ghana, prosperity rises and falls from parent to child, love comes and goes, and the characters’ trust of white men wavers. These story elements purposely echo like ghosts—as history often repeats itself—yet Gyasi writes each narrative with remarkable freshness and subtlety. A marvelous novel. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME Entertainment. -
March 15, 2016
A novel of sharply drawn character studies immersed in more than 250 hard, transformative years in the African-American diaspora. Gyasi's debut novel opens in the mid-1700s in what is now Ghana, as tribal rivalries are exploited by British and Dutch colonists and slave traders. The daughter of one tribal leader marries a British man for financial expediency, then learns that the "castle" he governs is a holding dungeon for slaves. (When she asks what's held there, she's told "cargo.") The narrative soon alternates chapters between the Ghanans and their American descendants up through the present day. On either side of the Atlantic, the tale is often one of racism, degradation, and loss: a slave on an Alabama plantation is whipped "until the blood on the ground is high enough to bathe a baby"; a freedman in Baltimore fears being sent back South with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act; a Ghanan woman is driven mad from the abuse of a missionary and her husband's injury in a tribal war; a woman in Harlem is increasingly distanced from (and then humiliated by) her husband, who passes as white. Gyasi is a deeply empathetic writer, and each of the novel's 14 chapters is a savvy character portrait that reveals the impact of racism from multiple perspectives. It lacks the sweep that its premise implies, though: while the characters share a bloodline, and a gold-flecked stone appears throughout the book as a symbolic connector, the novel is more a well-made linked story collection than a complex epic. Yet Gyasi plainly has the talent to pull that off: "I will be my own nation," one woman tells a British suitor early on, and the author understands both the necessity of that defiance and how hard it is to follow through on it. A promising debut that's awake to emotional, political, and cultural tensions across time and continents.COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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October 1, 2016
This sweeping family saga encompasses seven generations of descendants of a Fante and his captured Asante house slave. After giving birth to a daughter, Maame manages to escape, making her way alone back to her own village. She is taken in by an Asante warrior, becomes his third wife, and has a second daughter by him. The two sisters, Effia and Esi, will never meet, their lives will follow very different paths, but their descendants will share a legacy of warfare and slavery. Effia will marry an Englishman who oversees the British interest in the Gold Coast slave trade. Esi will be captured by Fante warriors, traded to the Englishmen, and shipped to America to be sold into slavery. Progressing through 300 years of Ghanaian and American history, the narrative unfolds in a series of concise portraits of each sister's progeny that capture pivotal moments in each individual's life. Every portrait reads like a short story unto itself, making this volume a good choice for harried teens, yet Gyasi imbues the work with a remarkably seamless feel. Through the combined historical perspectives of each descendant, the author reveals that racism is often rooted in tribalism, greed, and the lust for power. Many students will be surprised to discover that the enslavement of Africans was not just a white man's crime. VERDICT Well researched, beautifully told, and easy to read, this title is destined to become required, as well as enlightening, reading for teens.-Cary Frostick, formerly at Mary Riley Styles Public Library, Falls Church, VA
Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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May 1, 2016
This sometimes painful novel by Ghanaian author Gyasi has garnered much prepublication attention, including a blurb by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It traces, through the stories of two main families in alternating chapters proceeding chronologically, the history of Ghanaian and American civilization from the eighteenth century to the present, in Africa (where one branch of the family initially stays) and America (where the other goes). It opens with the horrors wrought by British enslavement of the Africans, especially the women, and goes through each stage efficiently. The author has done her research, and though the book occasionally reads like a historical overview (each elementthe beginning of cocoa cultivation in Ghana, the Fugitive Slave Act, and, later, the convict-lease system in Americafeels summarized rather than dealt with dramatically), it has power and beauty, thanks to Gyasi's commanding style. Expect the novel to attract considerable attention and to appeal to readers of multigenerational sagas.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.) -
Starred review from June 1, 2016
Fiction can do what straightforward historical narrative cannot: compress 300 years of African American experience into a story that is at once cohesive and compelling. The saga begins in West Africa in the 18th century, when Effia, a beautiful girl in the Asante tribe, is married off to a British officer who oversees slave trafficking at a fortress on the Gold Coast. Thus starts an African family line that bears the curse of complicity in slavery. At the same time, Effia's half sister Esi is captured, endures the Middle Passage, and lands in America as a slave on a Southern plantation. Individual chapters take readers chronologically through pivotal historical moments and up to the present: living in Baltimore after the 1857 Dred Scott decision, Harlem during the Great Migration, a ghetto in the 1960s, and postcolonial Africa. Gyasi's characters are vividly drawn, sympathetic yet not simplistically heroic. It's wrenching to leave them behind, but readers will be quickly enthralled by the next generation's story. VERDICT This is an amazing first novel, remarkable in its epic vision. [See Prepub Alert, 1/4/16.]--Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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February 1, 2016
From different villages in 18th-century Ghana, half-sisters Effia and Esi lead very different lives, with Effia married off to an Englishman and living comfortably in Cape Coast Castle and Esi imprisoned in that very castle before being sold into slavery in America. Then the narrative sweeps through to the Civil War, the Great Migration, and more, effectively embracing several centuries of American history and its formative influences. There's tremendous excitement about this ambitious debut from Ghana-raised, Alabama-born Gyasi, which was bid on by ten publishers. With a six-city tour.
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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June 1, 2016
Fiction can do what straightforward historical narrative cannot: compress 300 years of African American experience into a story that is at once cohesive and compelling. The saga begins in West Africa in the 18th century, when Effia, a beautiful girl in the Asante tribe, is married off to a British officer who oversees slave trafficking at a fortress on the Gold Coast. Thus starts an African family line that bears the curse of complicity in slavery. At the same time, Effia's half sister Esi is captured, endures the Middle Passage, and lands in America as a slave on a Southern plantation. Individual chapters take readers chronologically through pivotal historical moments and up to the present: living in Baltimore after the 1857 Dred Scott decision, Harlem during the Great Migration, a ghetto in the 1960s, and postcolonial Africa. Gyasi's characters are vividly drawn, sympathetic yet not simplistically heroic. It's wrenching to leave them behind, but readers will be quickly enthralled by the next generation's story. VERDICT This is an amazing first novel, remarkable in its epic vision. [See Prepub Alert, 1/4/16.]--Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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December 1, 2016
In this sweeping family saga that begins in 18th-century Ghana, two half sisters and their families lead drastically different lives: one marries well, and the other is sold into slavery. An ambitious lyrical debut about the ramifications of slavery and our entangled histories. (http: //ow.ly/ysyd305MyZt)-Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL
Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Book Award winning author of Between the World and Me "Gyasi's characters are so fully realized, so elegantly carved--very often I found myself longing to hear more. Craft is essential given the task Gyasi sets for herself--drawing not just a lineage of two sisters, but two related peoples. Gyasi is deeply concerned with the sin of selling humans on Africans, not Europeans. But she does not scold. She does not excuse. And she does not romanticize. The black Americans she follows are not overly virtuous victims. Sin comes in all forms, from selling people to abandoning children. I think I needed to read a book like this to remember what is possible. I think I needed to remember what happens when you pair a gifted literary mind to an epic task. Homegoing is an inspiration."
- Phil Klay, National Book Award winning author of Redeployment "Homegoing is a remarkable feat--a novel at once epic and intimate, capturing the moral weight of history as it bears down on individual struggles, hopes, and fears. A tremendous debut."
