Homegoing

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

An expansive, peripatetic novel chronicling the journeys, joys, pains, triumphs, and atrocities suffered by two branches of one family, Homegoing is rooted by a few central elements: a black stone necklace, an almost mythical fire, the water of the Atlantic ocean, and a profound narrative belief that the stories of some Black U.S. Americans and some Black West Africans are actually two parts of a single story, and that this story deserves to be exquisitely told.

Homegoing’s structure is elegant and effective. The novel begins in Asanteland, where it introduces two half sisters. Raised apart from one another, and then more permanently separated by terrible circumstance, one sister is captured and sold into slavery, and the other marries a White man in a position of power with colonial goverment. Spooling outward from there, the novel follows the progressive generations descending from these half sisters in alternating chapters, catching broad swaths of U.S. American and Ghanain history in its sweep. Even while explicating parts of history not given their due time in the spotlight by the publishing industry or the education system, Gyasi’s novel is never dry or dull. The pages pulse with life, mystery, pathos, and delight. The distinct and vivid characters are a triumph, particularly in a novel with such an ambitiously populated cast. Each one is dignified with their own arc, their own sense of longing, place, and importance: it is clear that the characters here are not considered means to an edifying end or just a way to satisfy the conceit, but are instead each an artist’s tender, thorough, and human creations.

As the character Yaw, a schoolteacher, imparts to his students on their first day of class each year, “History is Storytelling” (225). Gyasi shows that this is not only true but that the story of history, well told, can also be emotionally impactful, intellectually nourishing, and a spiritually transformative. It can teach all of us who read and pay attention another lesson, this one imparted to Yaw by his own, long-estranged mother: “There are people who have done wrong because they could not see the result of the wrong” (242). With Gyasi’s novel, none can claim not to see the result of the wrongs of slavery, racism, colonialism, capitalism, misogyny, and greed. With this story in our minds, all of us should rededicate ourselves to living in the light of its lessons, with more humanity, more generosity, and more urgent remembrance of the way the past still lives in all of us.