Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Esi learned to split her life into Before the Castle and Now. Before the Castle, she was the daughter of Big Man and his third wife, Maame. Now she was dust. Before the Castle, she was the prettiest girl in the village. Now she was thin air.

Homegoing begins with the story of two half-sisters who have never met: Effia is a Fante woman who becomes the wife of the white colonial administrator on Ghana's Cape Coast; her marriage elevates her to a status and lifestyle that most of her countrymen could never dream about. Esi is the daughter of the "Big Man," the local tribal leader, but in a nighttime raid she is caught and enslaved. She's kept in the lower floors of the same castle in which Effia now lives. As she struggles to breathe, packed with her fellow enslaved like stacks of cordwood, Effia trods the boards above her head, not knowing that her half-sister struggles down below.

Homegoing follows the lineages of these two women over the next two and a half centuries: Esi's descendants are raised in slavery in the American South, sometimes escaping into freedom and sometimes being pulled back into bondage; when slavery ends, they find themselves at the mercy of the forces that have shaped Black life in the 19th and 20th centuries: sharecropping, Jim Crow, jazz. Effia's descendants experience the tumult of Ghana's colonial history: alliance and enmity with the British, colonial subjugation, Christian proselytizing, independence, diaspora. They are sometimes powerful and sometimes lowly. In the novel's end, the two threads are tied together again: Effia's descendant Marjorie migrates to America with her family and falls for her millionth-cousin-a-billion-times-removed, Esi's descendant Marcus.

The power of Homegoing is in its scope. In a world where the practice of slavery has obscured the lineage of most Black Americans, it's fascinating to see the way the generations may, for one family, unfold. The impression that you get is that a few centuries really seem like nothing at all; for both Esi and Effia's lines, it takes only seven generations to get from then to now. Just a handful of names, not difficult at all to memorize. The novel smartly avoids making any grand over-statements about the sisters' two paths; we are not, for example, asked to believe that Marjorie has ended up in a better place than Marcus because she has not suffered from the historical effects of slavery. If anything, Homegoing seeks to remind us that the conquest of white supremacy has many consequences, and touches everyone and everything, though in different ways. And Gyasi insists over and over again that Ghanaian complicity with European slavery must be made part of the story, too.

But as a book, it really didn't work for me. Seven generations and two lineages means fourteen vignettes in 300 pages, and though many of the stories have compelling elements--I liked the one about the Baltimore freedman whose freeborn wife is abducted under the Fugitive Slave Law, and the one about the Ghanaian teacher who falls in love with his housekeeper--Gyasi is too intent on packing these characters' whole lives into each vignette. As a result, Homegoing speeds through too much summary, and none of the characters really live. That packed-sardine quality might explain, too, why she so often has the characters pointedly explain the themes to us:

How many more times could he pick himself up off the dirty floor of a jail cell? How many hours could he spend marching? How many bruises could he collect from the police? How many more letters to the mayor, governor, president could he send? How many more days would it take to get something to change? And when it changed, would it change? Would America be any different, or would it be mostly the same?

It's a familiar enough sentiment, but it feels trite to me, as much of the book does. You can see Gyasi straining to get in all the major elements of Black U.S. history--here's where the Great Migration goes, and here's the Fugitive Slave Law, and we can't forget prison. There might be a way to do that without seeming forced, but Homegoing doesn't manage it. That might explain, actually, why the Ghana scenes are more convincing: thought they hit the same pointed historical notes, it's a history that's not familiar to me, so it all feels a little bit fresher.

With the addition of Ghana, my "countries read" list is up to 80!

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

I first heard of Homegoing when my eyes were drawn it's brightly cover on the front page of The AV Club, a pop culture site I frequent even though it mostly sucks now, and which rarely reviews any books I would consider reading. I skimmed the review, and then forgot about it, but the book kept popping up in my newsfeed and on endcaps at the bookstore. When I saw it on sale at the end of the year for 3.99, I couldn't resist, especially since it played into my goal, this year, of reading more lit by women and POC.

And it turns out Homegoing was a great choice for that particular initiative, since it covers men, women, racial minorities, and LGBT persons and it does so over the backdrop of 400 years of history, starting around 1600, I think (the book doesn't give dates and I'm terrible with them) and moving straight through till now, with the sections of the book each following some member of the family of a pair of half-sisters, Effia and Esi, whose stories begin in colonial Africa. As the book progresses, so does the timeline, with chapters alternating, roughly, between Effia's side of the family, whose stories largely take place in Africa, and Esi's, who is sold into slavery and taken to Europe and, eventually, America.

To go deep into all the different stories in Homegoing would take forever, and diminish one of the primary pleasures (and pains) of the book--seeing the clever ways Gyasi connects to family members to their different times, and how each deals with the dual impacts of racism and the destruction of their culture. And the impacts are really the part of the book that have stuck with me the most. The structure here, which gives the whole story an epic, almost mythological feeling at times, is constantly undercut by the brutal realities faced by these people, trials Gyasi wisely ties in with the unique traits of each protagonist. Instead of being the victim of generic "racism", we see Quey forced to travel to America when his father learns that he's gay. We see Willie faced with the powerlessness, in early 19th century America, of a woman who isn't light-skinned enough to pass. And there are many more (the genealogy in the front lists about 17 people who get their own stories here). The scope and Gyasi's willingness to make her characters bleed, as well as her canny ability to inject a ray of hope just when it all gets too depressing, drive the story.

I know I haven't spoken much here about the actual themes of slavery and oppression woven into the heart of Homegoing, but they are there, and they are impactful. Sometimes it was hard to even pick the book back up, because it seems (and, for some of the characters, it's true) that there is not, nor will there ever be, a way for them to transcend their blackness, but the last section--which ties everything up too neatly by half but also makes this important point--took me to task for these thoughts, rightly, because blackness is not a thing that should be transcended. Rather, it has always been the small-minded, small-hearted, wicked heart of man that needs elevation. And the kaleidoscope of people that populate Homegoing make the point beautifully.

Also, Gyasi is only 25 years old and this is her first novel. Really excited to see what she does next.