Homegoing Book Review: The Story Around the Descendants of Maame

This novel by Yaa Gyasi depicts the early stages of slavery in Ghana. However, the story is built around the descendants of Maame an Asante woman in the eighteenth-century Ghana. She escaped from the fante land where she was a slave to an Asante household leaving behind her new born baby who is later know as Effia. Maame later got married to a great Asanteman and gave birth to another child called Esi. The two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, were born in separate villages. Effia got married to an Englishman called James Collins, who was involved in the slavery business, and lives in Cape Coast Castle. Unknown to Effia her half-sister, Esi was sold as slave to the British, and was imprisoned in the castle dungeons beneath them. Esi was part of about thousand slaves who were sent off to America through the West African Atlantic slave trade. She therefore, made a family of her own there. Her children and grandchildren were raised in slavery. The novel is structured in the way that each chaper narrates the generation one representative of the descendants of either Effia or Esi and the two families alternate up to the present day. Quey, James, Abena, Akua, Yaw and Marjorie as expanded into chapters follows the descendants of Effia and James Collins. On the other hand, the chapters titled Ness, Kojo, H, Willie, Sonny and Marcus follows the descendants of Esi.

‘Homegoing’ brings to light the effect of racial stereotypes and bias on an individual’s character. From the reading for instance, in part two ‘Homegoing’, Marjorie sees how her status as a black girl renders her unable to date a white boy in her class, although her class contributions, arguments or claims are not even considered by the teacher. Again, the point where Esi was caught running and placed in the prison for women. Where she describes the story of how a soldier raped her and stares at her with shame. This depicts racial brutality against women based on their skin colour. Yaa Gyasi, helps with these incidences captured in her book to make us understand the concepts of stereotype and racism in much clearer lenses.

In relation to a book written by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. Which is about the myth created by the people of Buganda in Uganda. Both the ‘Homegoing’ and Kintu shares similarities such as rich and detailed histories and generational family lines. These two stories are dissimilar in the geographical setting of the stories. For instance, whereas ‘Homegoing’ was based on Ghanaian setting, ‘Kintu’ was based on Uganda setting

I think in all the book was very interesting. Its uniqueness is indispensable in the sense that organization of the book does not follow the normal chapters that uses numbers but rather is arranged in a chronological order linking different stories of different generations together. With this I mean each of the chapters can be a whole story on its own but yet she finds and interesting way of linking them all together.