Knopf won the bid with a $1 million offer and has printed 50,000 copies before the release date, which is scheduled for June 7th. For any who might not know why this book is getting a lot of buzz, aside from the brilliant, poetic and complex subject Yaa tackles so well in her debut novel, it was in a bidding war between G.P. We empathize as the family ties are stretched to its limit some members are complicit with the oppressor while others fight to the death. The characters are three dimensional and flawed, and we love and dislike them as we would folks who share their strengths and foibles in real life. The narrative is fueled by gut wrenching tales of alienation, fragmentation and great loss. We are immediately pulled into the story of Effia’s birth in chapter 1 and Esi’s capture in chapter 2 and you know that this is going to be a long and bumpy literary ride that will hold you captive till the last line on page 300.Īs the stories unfold in each chapter with a character’s name: Effia, Esi, Quey, Ness, James, Kojo, Abene in Part 1 and H, Akua, Willie, Yaw, Sonny, Marjorie and Marcus in Part 2, Yaa shares their stories without excuses or romanticized notions. Each part ties kin and bloodlines together through the chapter titles and the lilting, lyrical, unfolding stories which are, at times, a brutally honest depiction of the life and struggles of the protagonists and their families from the period of slavery through the Civil War, Great Migration, the colonial period to contemporary times. HOMEGOING, A Novel by Yaa Ghasi is an epic work of historical/literacy fiction, beautifully crafted in 14 chapters and divided into two parts. 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. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. 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.
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. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana.
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