2024 BOOK REVIEW #24: HOMEGOING BY YAA GYASI

I am thankful the enthralling award winning Homegoing, the 2016 debut novel by Gahanain-American author Yaa Gyasi, was recently loaned to me by a friend.

The historical fiction, layered generation to generation, passing the baton from one to the other, with a family division from outset, and dual initially diametrically opposed narratives, is gripping, revealing and nuance worthy.

Far from the usual depictions of west Africa and the southern U.S., the book throws the readers into the throes of the slavery trade, tribal kingdoms, village and plantation life, before hurtling onwards, with the transmission of trauma and lore, descendant to descendant.

I've had the privilege of going to the Ghana coast and interior myself as a journalist, and to some of the places inhabited by the protagonists in the U.S. as part of the Great Migration, and learned through each character of new details so vitally important to understanding even more on the panoramic horrors of the slave trade and its many ramifications.

In vignette style, the reader gets new insights into major but often overlooked historical periods, such as the introduction of cacao in Ghana to Anglo-Asante wars and the jazz age in Harlem. Each chapter, each new progeny has their own powerful, reflective journey.

The Ghana born Gyasi who grew up in Alabama first went back to her homeland with a Stanford research grant in 2009, seeing firsthand the Cape Coast Castle, which serves as a recurring upstairs downstairs dichotomy between those benefiting from the slave trade and where slaves were kept in ghastly conditions.

“I think I was kind of constantly interacting, I guess, with really what the legacy of slavery is. You know, coming from a country, Ghana, that had a role in slavery, and then ending up in a place where slavery is still so strongly felt institutionally, as racism is still so strongly felt. The irony of that wasn't lost on me. And I think, had I not grown up in Alabama, I don't know that I would have ever written this book,” Gyasi told NPR in an interview to promote the book.