This is an incredibly well crafted novel. 8 generations, a single chapter given to each character, but so well threaded together that it isn't a book of short stories, but a full journey.

The novel starts with half sisters, unknown to each other, but through village wars in Ghana are set on the paths to very different lives for themselves and their future generations. One goes on to become the wife of a white British colonel instrumental in the slave trade to America. The other sister is one of those slaves.... and so starts the journey.

Each chapter introduces us to the next generation, and in just a few pages we are drawn into their worlds. It is incredible the level of emotion and care for a character the author can make us feel so quickly.

Very powerful, a really good read

A wonderfully written debut that explores how slavery impacted generations of a family. This was definitely a powerful and intense book.

Homegoing is a compelling and impressive debut novel by Ghanaian-American writer Yaa Gyasi.   Before I read it I assumed it would focus on the slave trade, but it's actually much more wide ranging and is really a chronicle of black history in Africa and America.

The story starts with two half sisters who are raised separately on the African Gold Coast.  One of them marries a white soldier who is in charge of the 'castle' where slaves are kept before they are traffiked abroad.  The other is kidnapped from her village by the African tribesmen who are in the pay of the British slavers, and after a horrific and gruelling journey by sea, is set to work on a cotton  plantation in the American South.  The book chronicles the lives of the descendants of these sisters as they live very different but parallel lives in Africa and America and spans over 300 years.  Each chapter is almost a stand-along short story in its own right, but the thread that links them is strong and powerful.  

Although this is essentially an historical novel, the events and attitudes Gyasi describes, such as racism and human trafficking, are sadly all too real and relevant.  My eyes were also opened to other aspects of the slave trade, including the involvement of African tribes in capturing and selling their countrymen and the use of black prisoners in mines as well as on plantations.  It's a harrowing read at times, but also engrossing as each generation struggles to shake off the past.

What can I say about this book that hasn't already been said?
It is as fanatic as everyone says!

The writing is beautiful, it pulls you into the story, keeps you in a very firm grip, let's you feel and hope and dream and freed with the characters, and kind of makes you morn that the book ended.

The characters are wonderful, realistic but relatable, it felt more like getting to know people again instead of getting the first introduction to them.
Which I find is something author very rarely manage to do, give you the feel of "oh I know that person already!" Without also giving you the feeling you already know the story and the boredom that can come with it.

This book manages to give you the feel of knowing the story and the characters without any boredom or real recognition. Which is just wonderful.

This book didn't talk the history of black people pretty, it shows how it was and how it is and at the same time does it without being overly brutal or hurtful about it.

This book was beautiful and one I will defienelty reread in physical copy in the near future.

The conversation about race is an ongoing battle with many (mostly white) voices saying that we no longer need to talk about it. Homegoing made me appreciate just how much we need to talk about this, by looking back, looking at the present in order to hopefully create a future where we can say that we truly dealt with the past and can look ahead. The novel has really brought home to me that people who are African American have to look back on generation upon generation of unspeakable horror. It would be easy for me to say as a white woman that this book broke my heart, that would be the easy way out, taking it to heart. I think this book has actually woken me up to begin to understand the bigger picture here. I am expecting great things of this author and cannot wait for more writings from her.

“What comes from nothing and no-one?” asks the stepmother of Effia, one of two half-sisters whose lives kick off Homegoing’s epic tale of seven generations. “Well, all of this,” debut author Yaa Gyasi goes on to answer. Weaving through generations and back and forth across the slave trade route from Africa’s Gold Coast to the United States of America, Homegoing gives a panoramic history of two countries inextricably linked by cruelty, and the relationships that blossom to keep them bound together.

Gyasi gives the best of the short story and novel forms, portraying slices of over 14 lives that descend through seven generations and over three centuries. Each section is led by a new protagonist, picking up at a pertinent moment in their lives while allowing the reader to pause and find their connection to Effia or Esi: two half-sisters who never met, instead going on to meet separate fates. One becomes the “wench” bride of a white slave trader; the other sold as a slave. The timelines of their descendants bob and weave, connections to the past ever-present.

Just as one Ghanaian asks her descendant how white people decided that witchcraft must be evil, the author questions her readers’ assumptions and presents her characters without judgment, acting as they might within their unique circumstances. In simple and expressive prose she captures their traits, languages, and surroundings with a naturalism that paints an evocative and detailed map of history in the reader’s mind. While a couple of the well-trod scenes of the antebellum era feel pat, it is most powerful when exploring areas of history that are less prevalent in contemporary American novels – particularly the influence of the politics within the Gold Coast tribes and their complicity with, and wars against, imperial influence. Entwining history, politics, and personal events, this is an ambitious novel that is, and will continue to be, highly culturally relevant.

The Fante and the Asante are two rival tribes in West Africa. When they fight they take prisoners and many prisoners are handed over to the white soldiers at Cape Castle to become slaves. In the 18th century two sisters are born, they never meet directly but one is 'married' to a white slaver and the other becomes a slave. Over the next seven generations this book follows their descendants through poverty, slavery, madness and success on either side of the Atlantic until there is a return to Cape Castle and two distant cousins come together.

The narrative jumps between two different cultures and the story of the two different families but it is a narrative that reads chronologically. One branch of the family becomes slaves in America and their struggle to gain freedom and independence is heartrending. More confusing was the story of the African branch of the family, but that may just be because I am not familiar with the culture. Overall this was an interesting read, a historical epic covering huge subjects but kept tight in terms of direction and detail.

Homegoing is a multigenerational family saga about two sisters born in eighteenth-century Ghana. Separated at birth, each chapter alternates between the two different family lines and their descendants throughout the years.

The vignette like chapters are brilliantly written to capture the scope of a life with such limited pages, and yet rich with so much detail. Gyasi manages to give each character their own fleshed out arc, and yet also illustrates how they are connected to one another and bare the weight of their past.

Each chapter is filled with scars, but also beauty and poignancy. Gyasi brings emotion and depth to each character and you truly become attached to all of them, they feel utterly real. And whilst Gyasi writes from a place of deep and humane empathy, she is unafraid to show the complexity of these characters.

Homegoing is a boldly ambitious novel, and there is a joy in experiencing how Gyasi’s rich writing takes you through history and deep characterization in such an effective and vivid manner. Whilst brutal at many points, there are glimpses of joy and hope throughout. Utterly brilliant!

There is no question this book is stunning: in its scope, its ambition, in what it can teach us and in the skill on display. In Homegoing, a portrait of a West African family in 1754 feels as true to life as dialogue between kids at a California pool party today. But if to read it is to be in a constant state of awe, it is also to experience a sense of loss. Not just from of the painful lessons of history, but also, as a reader, in the necessary incompleteness of the stories it contains.

Towards the end of the novel a modern day student, Marcus, considers the monumental task of writing an academic paper on an aspect of black history. His task is also Yaa Gyasi’s task in writing Homegoing, his challenges her challenges: how to explain “the feeling of time, of having been a part of something that stretched so far back, was so impossibly large?” He fails to pick one moment in history: - how to talk about the convict leasing system without talking about the Great Migration? How to mention that without talking about Harlem?

This was Gyasi’s own problem and her solution is elegant and bold: tell it all. Tell every moment; from when the first African slaves were plucked from their homes and shipped, right through 8 generations to the present day. And if that wasn’t ambitious enough she takes two alternative pathways through that time - the descendents of two half-sisters Esi and Effia - one sold into slavery, the other the wife of a slaver. One thread evolving in America, the other in Africa.

The result is a chronological epic moving quickly through the generations, each chapter telling a different tale. It’s almost like a collection of short stories, except that each section adds to the next and each character’s experience is inextricably linked to the one before. This sense of intricate interconnection is powerful, but just as powerful are the missed connections, or the invisible ones.

As a reader, it’s hard to shake the addiction to storytelling norms: as each character is separated from his or her family and fails to find their way back, or when they don’t even know what the family links are, it’s a loss, a disappointment, for the reader. And the losses pile up in the book.

It’s also hard to let some of the characters go, each is snatched from us before we’re ready. That I wanted more from each story is a credit to the fabulous characterisation and writing in each chapter, but that didn’t stop it from being frustrating. Every chapter could be a captivating novel in itself, and throughout the book I yearned to revisit the original sisters.

But loss is an appropriate thing to feel reading this book. It complements the horror and pain of the stories being told. I didn’t find Homegoing as shocking or visceral as that other recent, acclaimed, slavery novel - The Underground Railroad. On the surface it feels gentler and more thoughtful; there are horrific details in there, but they are just enough to set the context. In the end though, I think Homegoing may actually hit a little harder.

And if reading it hits hard, then writing it is harder, researching it harder still, and nothing comes close to the real lives behind the stories. As Gyasi said in a recent interview: “The writing was never as difficult as the research;" and considering his paper, her character Marcus reflects “It was one thing to research something, another thing entirely to have lived it. To have felt it,” Reading Homegoing, the most we can hope for is a shade more understanding and empathy than we had before. If we also get a sense that we’re a part of the continuum of suffering it describes, all the better. And if we are jolted from our storytelling expectations, yearning for missed connections and denied the satisfaction of a contrived happily-ever-after, then that is entirely as it should be.

There's something about a well-told family saga that I find so immersive and emotionally moving. It gives not only a powerful sense of people's lineage with aspects of personality, physical traits and heirlooms passed through those generations, but also the movement of time. By following the flow of passing generations in a way that we're unable to locked in the immediacy of our own lives, we're keyed into what might have been, the struggles endured and the sacrifices made so that we can live. Novels can anchor these stories of multiple generations in larger themes about the way society has changed over the years as in Neel Mukherjee's “The Lives of Others” which portrays the impact the Naxalite movement in Bengal had upon one family, Matthew Thomas's “We Are Not Ourselves” which shows the lasting effect of alcoholism in an Irish immigrant family in NYC, Sara Taylor's “The Shore” which shows the transformation of an island over many generations and Joyce Carol Oates' “Bellefleur” which gives a sense of capitalism's connection to the American dream. Now, Yaa Gyasi has created such an inventive well-written debut novel which follows the lineage of two African sisters separated at birth and the history of the slave trade over centuries.

One thing I find so moving about a family saga like this is the way it conveys the tremendous fragility of life and importance of personal choices. Not only do these things affect an individual's destiny, but also the destiny of all the generations which will proceed that person. This shows how the element of chance has such a strong impact upon the world. It's observed at one point “How easy it was for a life to go one way instead of another.” “Homegoing” really begins with a calamitous event which sees two sisters separated – one grows up in a semi-prosperous family where the daughter is promised in marriage to a powerful man and the other belongs to a tribe where she's captured and forced into slavery. It's only through a twist of fate that one thrives and the other suffers horribly. But just because the progeny of these women were born in particular circumstances doesn't mean they are fated to a certain path in life. Through acts of will the subsequent generations shape their own fates and fortunes which consequently heavily influence their own children.

Even though Gyasi follows the individual stories of more than a dozen members of this family through the centuries I was so impressed how it never felt overwhelming or confusing. It's a mark of a great writer that can introduce characters who feel fully formed and already familiar. This is true not only for the family members but also many notable periphery characters including Cudjo (an athletic man with latent same-sex desires) and Esther (a wonderfully garrulous woman who coaxes a historian to express his emotions more). The narrative switches back and forth between each subsequent generation of the sisters' family lines. Many stories build a sense of suspense as you discover the fates of the previous generations during the course of each new family member's story. Key objects such as two stones given to the sisters at the beginning travel through the generational lines as well as songs which are passed down from one child to the next. The initial meaning of an object or song might be lost, but the connection to that family history remains. Certain images also poignantly recur over the stories; it's observed of one early family member Fiifi that “he wore his silence like a golden crown” and then, many generations later, a woman named Willie sings “I shall wear a crown”. These references all add tremendously to the pleasure of the overarching story which the reader is keyed into when the characters are not.

It's fascinating learning particular details about the history of warring tribes (primarily the Asantes and Fantes tribes) in Ghana and how some tribes worked with the white colonialists to capture and sell slaves. A physical colonial castle in Ghana (Cape Coast Castle) which the slave trade was facilitated through becomes a focal point for the families involved in this story. In a way it takes on a fairy tale quality like Bluebeard's castle where some inhabitants live a privileged life unaware or wilfully ignorant of the horrors within the locked subterranean dungeons which hold many captured black people waiting to be sold into slavery in America and the Caribbean. This castle has subsequently become a significant destination where people from the Americas and Britain return to in order to contemplate the significant rift in identity which is colonialism and slavery's legacy. It's a fascinating coincidence that a visit to this same castle also takes place in Zadie Smith's recent novel “Swing Time”. The fact of this historic structure really drives home the reality of the true horrors and long-lasting impact of slavery. Both authors show the quixotic feelings this landmark induces for visitors in contemplating our connection to that history, but also the way it is ultimately unknowable to us.

Later generations meaningfully explore the legacy of slavery in America in particular and its history of racial conflict. When British slavery comes to an end, it's observed how “They would just trade one type of shackles for another, physical ones that wrapped around wrists and ankles for the invisible ones that wrapped around the mind.” Gyasi powerfully shows how this legacy is borne out over generations leading to disproportionate amounts of black people in America experiencing poverty, discrimination and imprisonment. It leads one character to find that “he knew in his body even if he hadn't yet put it together in his mind: in America, the worst thing you could be was a black man. Worse than dead, you were a dead man walking.” The novel portrays the consequences of this state of being and conveys what an important influence the past has upon the present.

Yaa Gyasi is an incredibly powerful storyteller and I found the novel as a whole utterly gripping. However, even though I think the transitions from one story to the next are graceful and each family member is compellingly well-rounded in their own right, I found some stories more effective than others. In particular, the story of one woman's move to Harlem with her light-skinned husband who can pass as white felt too compressed and fast-moving to me. It seemed that this particular story needed an entire novel of its own to fully flesh out the conflicts it explores and the conclusions it comes to. But, on the whole, most of the stories work as single pieces in the grand puzzle of this dynamic and fascinating family. I grew really attached to some characters and wished the novel would stay with them longer, but the momentum of moving from one generation to the next creates a thrilling story in itself making me ultimately glad that Gyasi structured the novel in this way. As already observed from many sources after its much-lauded publication in America last year, “Homegoing” is a tremendously accomplished and intelligent debut.

Homegoing is a rich debut novel that follows the lives of two half sisters: Effia and Esi. Both their lives change in different ways when they reach the Cape Coastal Castle in Ghana. Effia lives upstairs, the wife of a white English governor who's in the slave trading business. Esi is downstairs, in the dungeon, waiting to go to the American South as a slave. The story follows the descendants of each woman, alternating from one of Effia's descendants to one of Esi's, going down through six more generations. Effia's side of the family stay mainly in Ghana, while Esi's side are in America. Both have their successes and struggles, from such issues as slavery in America, colonisation, drug addiction, sexuality, violence, death, doing what's right for you vs what's expected of you.

I'm just blown away by this book. There's a lot of hype surrounding it but it lives up to this hype. For such a short book (compared to the amount of people's stories we read) Yaa Gyasi packs in so much depth and detail. When it comes to multiple perspectives, sometimes the story or character development can suffer but I never found this the case. If there was ever one person's story or an event I wanted more to know more about, usually I found out more when it came to the next descendant's story.Through the generations there's an importance on telling stories and we get to see moments in history and how they impacted that character's life. We see family traits and fears pass through the generations, sometimes without them knowing that they affected the previous generations. This is especially the case when it comes to the themes of fire and water and I loved seeing how this theme crops up with Effia and Esi and with the final generation. And if the sheer number of characters sounds overwhelming (there's 12 perspectives after all!), I didn't think it was confusing and there's a family tree within in the book to help you keep track. With some many of the issues I mentioned above being bleak, this book isn't the happiest at times and it can be a bit tough (I was describing the book to my fiance and he said 'this doesn't sound cheerful at all!') but the book warmed my heart while reading it and has had me thinking about it days after finishing it. Yaa Gyasi's writing is superb and such a delight. I was interested in each character along the way and looked forward to picking up this book every night. Believe the hype, it's well worth picking up!

I don’t read a lot of literary fiction, even less when it’s of the historical variety, but given all the hype surrounding this book I just had to give it a try.

The book begins with two sisters in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in the mid-18th century, one who marries a British slave trader and one who is captured into slavery. From there it follows the lives of their descendants up until the present day, allowing the reader to see how the initial split into two very different paths has a knock-on effect on each successive generation.

This is a highly impactful novel that focuses on the hardship black people have had to face, both as individuals and as a community. It is by no means a comfortable read – I was disgusted at how the characters were treated by white people at many points throughout the book, and it is therefore necessary to put out a trigger warning for sexual assault/harassment, physical abuse and derogatory language (I should also mention that the book includes drug use and murder). It highlights how whilst slavery involving Ghana and Britain/the US was abolished approximately 150 years ago, its effects were long-reaching and still has a negative influence on modern society. As the years pass through the book’s duration it is possible to see that some progress has been made in the conduct towards ethnic minorities, however there is definitely still room for improvement.

I was a bit apprehensive going into this as I thought I might struggle with the writing with it being literary fiction, however it was a straight-forward read that kept me interested and invested in the characters (Ness, Kojo and Akua were particularly strong for me). There were several sentences that made me pause in appreciation – there was a section about how we can know the truth of a story that included “We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story” which I found especially relevant.

I can see why this book has been receiving such high praise and I expect it to be talked about for some time, however for me personally I’m only giving it 3 stars. I can’t fault it for anything but as it’s outside my reading preferences it’s not a book that I’ll be including among my favourites.

[Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for allowing me to read this for review.]

Firstly, that cover! They say never judge a book by its cover but in this case – do! It’s vibrant and gorgeous. I was drawn to this book by the cover and the rave reviews I was starting to see: an author to watch, stunning debut, ambitious etc. They’re not wrong.

I’m actually finding it quite difficult to gather my thoughts over this book. Spanning 300 years, it tracks the families of 2 sisters, Effia and Esi, born in Ghana in the 1700’s and the book begins in Cape Coast Castle, a castle that was used to house captives before they were shipped to the Americas as slaves. Effia is forced to marry an Englishman, one of the slave traders, and lives in comfort in the upper floors of the castle. Meanwhile, her sister, Esi, is captured and thrown in the dungeon below before being shipped to America to be a slave. From there we follow the stories of one of the descendants of each sister over the next 300 years in both Ghana and America. The book follows each descendant in turn so it’s essentially 12 short stories but they are all linked and there are enough references to people and places already featured that it feels like a complete book.

I imagined this book to be a sort of love letter to the authors’ ancestors and homeland. It is brutal (but never gratuitous), it is shocking (but never sensational), it is moving (but never sentimental). I liked the style of the book; Gyasi managed to create characters that I could totally believe belonged to the time and place they were featured in.

Verdict:

I felt Homegoing was an important book. I enjoyed parts of it enormously and others I found more difficult (but that might have been the point). Despite knowing, and have read books about, slaves and the slaveships before (read my review of The Book of Negroes here), it never gets any easier to read. I find it difficult to say I enjoyed this book as much of it was about enduring horrific hardship, but also it was about finding love and relationships.

I didn’t necessarily find any weak links in any of the 12 stories but some I did enjoy more than others. I particularly liked the ones set in Africa. The history, the legends; it felt more vibrant.

Have you read this? What did you think?

This is a truly astounding novel spanning 250 years and two continents. It follows the lives of black Africans as they deal with the colonisation of their homeland and the imposition of slavery upon them in a foreign land. The prose is clean and efficient, while still retaining a rhythmic and lyrical quality that makes it almost poetic in places. Each life is dealt with in a snapshot, and yet we are provided with complete characters dealing with their world as best they can. Obviously the book is not a happy one, given the horrific nature of its subject matter, but the prose is of such a high quality that while the events described may be difficult to get through, the narrative itself never is. It is an incredibly accomplished piece that somehow manages to encapsulate a history of oppression into 300 wonderful pages. Simply stunning.

Yaa Gyasi takes us on a journey spanning seven generations and thousands of miles in Homegoing. We begin our journey in the Gold Coast of Africa, in the time of British occupation, tribal wars and slavery. It’s from this point that we follow the descendants of two women across history and the globe.

Gyasi’s writing is captivating. She creates the most incredibly vivid characters, shares a snapshot of their story with us and moves on to the next generation. Now, when I realised this was the case I wasn’t too sure how I’d like it; journeying with one character/set of characters for such a short period of time before moving on. I needn’t have worried though; each and every one of Gyasi’s characters had me engrossed. I’m no writer, but I can only imagine the immense skill required to write such a huge cast of perfectly formed characters and to tell their stories in a continuing timeline.

I must confess that my knowledge of black history has been poor. I’ve read about slavery, its abolition, I’ve watched documentaries, but truly I’ve never managed to fit it all together in my mind. This book takes us chronologically through hundreds of years of history. While, I assume, the characters themselves are fictional, their situations and experiences are definitely not.

I hold my hands up and admit my shocking ignorance on the subject. I learned a great deal from this book – facts, yes, but also, importantly, seeing life through our characters.

Gyasi packs so much into this relatively short novel. We follow a family whose history is steeped in slavery, and another family whose societal position keeps them free. We pass from generation to generation, exploring and meeting the challenges of the day.

This book gives a real insight into some of the treatment of black people through the years: challenges faced, prejudices against them, ‘ownership’, segregation, police brutality.

I found myself so saddened while reading this to realise how far we have yet to go: that despite the passing of all this time, so much of this still rings true. Since I read this book, we’ve seen global events that have only increased racism, with society feeling that it’s actually moving backwards rather than forwards towards equality.

I could write about this book all day, but it’s a book you need to experience for yourself. Nothing I can write here can do justice to what is contained within the pages of Homegoing.

It’s a very readable, beautifully written, intimate and honest novel. Personally, I found it educational too. It’s a book I will be urging everyone to read. It’s a 300-something page journey through time and place that simply MUST be embarked upon.

I thought that was an incredibly ambitious book. The stories were shocking yet beautifully told, and the characters were fantastic. However I did struggle at times with the structure of the book, and the short story style of the novel - I would have liked less separate stories and more from each character. But still an excellent book.

A woman gives birth, then sets a fire to run away leaving her child behind. The child Effia grows into a great beauty and is given in marriage to a white man, a slave trader.

Her mother gives birth to another daughter, Esi. While Effia is living above the slave dungeons her unknown sister is beneath her, laying beneath other women and feeling their urine run down between her own legs before she is dragged away on a slave ship to America.

The story follows their descendents, showing us vignettes that highlight the most important moments of their lives – the moments things changed or coelesced into their true essence. We meet them picking cotton in Mississippi, at political meetings in Ghana, in the coal mines of Pensylvania or the missionary schools of Ghana through to the dive bars of Harlem and the universites of Ghana and America.

I really enjoyed this book, it takes the one fault I found with Roots and redresses it. We stay with each character long enough to care about them and get real insight into their lives but the book also keeps moving down the generations steadily. There’s roughly equal time spent with each character whether male or female. Often characters pop up again in their children or grandchildren’s stories which feels very natural and allows the reader to feel part of the story.

The descriptions are excellent also, I’ve never been to Ghana but I feel like I would recognise parts of it now if I was lucky enough to visit. For that matter I haven’t been to most of the U.S but I’ve seen it and read descriptions of it so often that I didn’t really notice those descriptions so much, they weren’t jarring though so they must have been good.

There are some very visceral scenes in this book, and some really uplifting ones. It does a good job of showing how slavery branded people on both sides of the trade. But at the same time it shows how strong the human spirit is.

4 Bites

Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader's wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow. Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of Harlem, spanning three continents and seven generations,

An absolute EPIC book - recommended to everyone I know.