Insurrecto and Homegoing Novels: The Struggle to Survive Colonization and Slavery

700s named Maame. Maame has one daughter while enslaved in a Fante village and another daughter after escaping back to Asanteland; as a consequence, her daughters never meet. Effia, Maame's first daughter, is married to a white man who has come to Africa as part of the British slave trade. There are three chapters within the book, Effia the daughter of Cobbe, Esi which was Effia’s half-sister, Quey son of Effia, Ness is the daughter of Esi, James son of Quey, Kojo,Abena, H, Akua, Willie, Yaw, Sonny, Marjorie and Marcus. The book focuses on couple historical events, slavery, segregation in America, racism, expectations. Effia was daughter of an unknown slave, she was set up to marry the chief of her village, but marries an british white men named James Collis, they both had a son named Quey, in which he struggled with self-identity because his parents were mix raced. Quey had a lot dreams and passion he wanted but his family and society’s expectation of him forced to follow the same way as men were supposed to be and show masculinity. He took over his dad’s slave trading business and married later on.

Effia was living in cape coast very luxurious and in comfort well better off than the rest of her people all because she married a white English man of power, Effia’s sister was imprisoned under the castle and was sold with thousands of other slaves off to the Gold Coast in which it leads to an upraise in slave trade. The white British had much control of the towns and people. Ness met a woman named “Aku” in which it was a way from him to be free from slavery, it seems like if people married another people of power like the white British man who were the one who owned the colony and the people that could you up out of slavery, ended up moving to America. Characters in the book some way or another tried to set themselves free from slavery through marriage. Sonny was in a romantic relationship with a woman named Amani which was jazz singer and gets him addicted to heroin, but at the end he gets clean. His son Marcus made his dad feel proud by going to university, and getting an PHD in black history. This British colony in 18th century was very male-centric and women had no rights other than to stay home and raise children. Men were considered more useful for the british colonizer, because they were better slaves and considered smarter. Gender plays a role in this book because everything its male-centric, there was lot of masculinity involved in which you had to prove to society that you were a real men.

In Insurrecto, the book reflects how history comes in broken pieces or incomplete; voices were amplified or silenced, story lines invented or forgotten. Same issues were faced in this as homgoing, racism, colonization, and gender issues among Filipinos and among Americans. Filipino revolutionaries against American soldiers within their country, Filipinos were fighting for territory and to be freed form any colonizer. Women tried to be taken into count by expressing art in many ways finding their way to their own truths and histories. Two women, a Filipino translator and an American filmmaker, went on a roundtrip to Philippines collaborating and Chiara got together a film about the massacre during the Philippine- American war. Although the united states won the war, there were others consequences that stayed, the invasion of the U.S to the Philippines lead to the introduction of English to the islands as the primary language of government, education, business, industry and in future decades, among upper-class families and educated individuals. Photographs of a captured country shot through the lens of the captor possess layers of ambiguity too confusing to grasp. Her characters marvel at photography’s mechanisms and denounce its propagandistic effects especially its commodification of suffering and faux valor, from the stereoscopes of early-20th-century soldiers.

In both novels Insurrecto and Homegoing, there is a struggle to survive colonization and slavery; people didn’t really know what it was like to be free but yet they pursued to be free, in Insurrecto there were Filipinos who rose up against their colonizers and in Homegoing people are pretty much bounded to their colonizers with no fight back to be set free. Family was so important in home going because it was a path for generations to follow, and also mean hierarchy depending on their profession. There was a lot expectations in Homegoing, for males they were to show masculinity, expected to marry multiple wives, to be leaders, the character of Quey had a difficult time to fit in because society would not accept anything else other than what they have always seen. Women were expected to stay home and take care of children and depended on their husbands financially. In Homegoing it was unacceptable for Quey or men to be homosexual; you would hardly be punished or maybe even killed if nothing changed. Men were expected to take on any family business, to be the ones that bring the bread, it was like men was the superior gender and women were looked down upon jut to have children. Gender is an important part that shapes this book because men were everything from society and there wasn’t much expected from a woman other than children. This way of thinking and living got passed on to generations for a very long time. There was more at stake than just slavery it was question about how would own the land, power, and the people.

Gender and religious beliefs are very often at the heart of people’s systems of values, such a variety has created tremendous conflicts, and continues to do so in many parts of the world today. In the book (“Gender in History”) in the ancient new east from 3000 BCE, talks about that in Christianity; men had more freedom. Sex between a married woman and a man not her husband was termed an abomination. Men were free to had sexual relationships with servants, slaves, concubines, along with their wives, though a woman having many lovers was not acceptable. A man could divorce his wife unilaterally while a wife could not divorce husband even for desertion Women were also expected or obligated to provide for men’s physical needs. I think all these expectations about women connects to page 114, because how women were treated. In HomeGiong there was also the issue of racism, if you were white you were more valuable to society, had respect, reputation and power. There was still social class distinction between the rich and the poor, while wealth was mainly inherited throughout generations, the poor worked or were enslaved to the rich. One tinkg both novels have in common is the colonizers.

Upon my research about he the British colony Gold coast in Homegoing, I noticed that the book wasn’t that fictional at all because people did struggle with racism, inequality, masculinity, Gender Inequality, slavery, I think that the book isn’t that fictional after all because it touches down on real problems that people were facing, obviously the characters within the book were fictional; but looking at quey’s life and the book as a whole it shows daily struggles of living under slave and colonizers. I used the book “Gender in History” to guide myself and see if some parts of homegoing were fictionalized or completely imagined, historically speaking the book is accurate; but character were fictionalized with a personality of their own like Quey. What I learned from Homeging and Insurrecto is that some problems throughout history are never solved or completely overcome; colonies are no longer existent if at all in the 21st century; slavery has evolved into modern day slavery but some other problems go on solved like racism, in which some people are still victim to in many ways; could be in their chances of getting job or beauty completions were women take part of and many other ways. Reading fictionalized versions of historical phenomena and events were useful because it painted a picture in mind and helped connected ideas throughout the course of history; it also helped understand the impact this issue has had in society and some problems were not solved but evolved into something else; it also had help me realized how gender roles has changed in certain countries like the United States, in which women can become leader, achieve just as much or more than men and have rights for themselves. There was a whole history behind it for women to get the rights that ehy have today in the US and some parts of the world.

I would recommend to someone who’s interested in learning about world history to not just focus on a fictional book but to also read other books that back up what the fictional book is addressing, it gives a sense of a better understanding and historical events will be better analyzed by the reader.