“This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others.”  -Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

Homegoing is a novel that reads like a series of vignettes. It spans eight generations, beginning in Ghana in the late 1700s with the stories of Effia and Esi – two sisters who don’t even know the other exists. Effia is forced to marry a British officer stationed at the notorious Cape Coast Castle, where people were imprisoned before being sold on into the slave markets of the Americas. Esi is captured in a raid on her village and sold as a slave, eventually ending up on a plantation in America. The novel alternates between tracing the experiences of Effia and Esi’s descendents – one family in Ghana and the other in America. Each chapter sheds light on a moment in time in a single character’s life, although sometimes there is intersection between the stories of parents and children. Although it is a relatively short novel, it has the feeling of a sweeping epic because Gyasi covers so much ground in terms of both Ghanan and African American experiences from the height of the slave trade until the present day.

What struck me the most in reading Homegoing was how Gyasi was exploring choice and consequences through her characters. Although each character is only part of the novel for a brief time, their choices often impact their children and their children’s children. Gyasi examines the role of choice – or lack of choice – in shaping her character’s lives that moves beyond family relationships to much broader issues, like the decision of Fante leaders to traffic slaves for the British, and the impact of the slave trade on those sent to the Americas but also on those who remained in west Africa. In many ways, it is a novel about power and how people are forced to conform to the expectations of those in power or face the consequences of their choices. Another major theme in the novel is the search for identity within both families and larger cultures and the desire to belong. Effia is forced from her family, where she was always treated differently, and into a marriage with a man she didn’t choose; her son, Quey does not belong in London, his father’s home, but neither does he truly belong in his mother’s Ghanan village. Being “other” in the worlds Gyasi contructs is dangerous – but conforming often comes at too high a cost.

While Gyasi ends the novel with a sense of hope for reconcilation despite the painful history the families have endured, much of the writing is haunting in its descriptions of the inhumanity that marginalized people face. Whether it was because of race, gender, sexual orientation or class, the weight of being disempowered is felt throughout the novel. Gyasi doesn’t pull back from the historical realities her characters face and I think she is playing to some degree with our expectations as readers – each chapter opens and closes on a single character and we keep waiting for a happy ending that doesn’t come. As I read, I kept waiting for it to “work out” for one of the characters and then I realized:  there weren’t going to be happy endings. And that was the point.

I have heard some people say that Homegoing is the best book they have read in recent years and while I wouldn’t say that’s true for me, it’s worth picking up. I like to “sit” with my characters for a while so the format of the novel was challenging because just as I felt I was getting to know a character, we were on to the next one. That being said, I know other people really liked that about the book’s style.

After what feels like weeks of pretty serious novels, the next one on my list, My Sister the Serial Killer should be a dose of something completely different. Drop me a line and let me know what you’re reading lately! Until next time, happy reading!