Deeply compelling novel that begins with two sisters in what is now Ghana in the eighteenth century. One is captured, transported across the Atlantic, and sold into slavery. The other marries a British colonial official, and remains in Africa. The novel traces the lives of their descendants up to the present, telling powerful stories and creating compelling characters. The parts that take place in Africa were fascinating to me, because I know so little about it. The parts that take place in the US were emotionally devastating. ( )

From the 1700s until the present day, the slave trade has poisoned American and Ghanian society and all involved.

"When someone does wring...it is like a fisherman casting a net into the water. He keeps only one or two fishtail he needs to
feed himself and puts the rest in the water, thinking that their lives will go back to normal. No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free." (p. 242)

For Maame' descendants, the consequences reverberate over generations filled with loss and grief, and remembering is painful:
"Hell was a place of remembering each beautiful moment passed through the mind's eye until it fell to the ground like a rotten mango, perfectly useless, uselessly perfect. " (p.28)
Each chapter combines a personal vignette with historical context...most living their lives"the way most people lived their lives, on upper levels, not stopping to peer underneath. "...characters affected by historic as well as contemporaneous events.

After reading this novel, readers will hopefully remember this important message:
"Now we come upon the problem of conflicting stories...Whose story do we believe, then? ...We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must ask yourself, 'Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? (p. 226) ( )

Hit, miss or epic fail, I love random book purchases from charity shops influenced purely by cover and blurb.
The novel opens with a family tree spanning seven generations starting with Maame, the mother of half-sisters Effia and Esi, and is perfect for keeping track of which side of the tree the descendants originate from.
Effia and Esi are born under different circumstances and destined to lead different lives, unaware of the other’s existence. Effia becomes the wife of white slave trader James Collins and lives in luxury at Cape Coast Castle. Fleeing her besieged village, Esi is captured, sold and held in the dungeons of the very same castle before being shipped to America.
Each chapter is a stand-alone novella, the whole a masterpiece in storytelling as the family history turns full circle through fire and water, war and division, America and Africa. From the barbarity and inhumanity of slavery in the deep south to no-holds-barred racism and discrimination in the north, from merciless missionaries in Kumasi to the poverty, rivalries and trading in the villages, Home Going doesn’t pull any punches yet still manages to provide hope.
Relevant, thought-provoking and highly recommended. A hit! ( )

Gyasi uses the stories of multiple characters through the generations to tell the history of the slave trade on Ghana's Cape Coast and to illustrate generational trauma. This is the way history should be taught, in my opinion, but I did not enjoy Gyasi's style of dropping the reader into a new character's storyline years later and then backtracking to explain how they became who they are. It's an important history to tell but not a terribly pleasant one to read. ( )

Never Ending Story

Media:Audio
Read by: Dominic Hoffman
Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins

Homegoing tells multiple stories from over 300years of Ghanian history through the eyes of fourteen people over seven generations and two continents, Africa and America.

The fourteen individuals are presented one by one, alternating between each branch of a family that splits between two Ghanaian nations.

The links between generations form two single strands from the huge binary tree whose root starts with one man and his progeny - the half-sisters raised separately. Subsequent generations are followed, two from each branch chosen from maternal or paternal lines with no apparent pattern.

Each generation-2 sister is given half of a black stone that is meant to be passed down to their children for generations. How this happens isn’t really dealt with but it’s no surprise that at least one half survives whole for 300 years.

At about generation-4 I started to lose track of the two branches of the family but did try to follow the stone. Admittedly this lack of pattern as to which two sub-branches would be in the next two chapters made the book interesting. I was forced to concentrate. Who had the stone? Who married who in the previous generation? What happened to the other children? I never knew who would pop up in the next chapters.

To add to the morass, there are multiple time shifts per chapter. I started counting them for interest. In at least one chapter time shifts within a single paragraph. While listening to Ness reminisce about her life, time shifts from her “present” situation to her early childhood memories, both presented “in the moment”. Later in Harlem I was in an apartment with Willie and in the next sentence I’m with her and her father “H” from previous generation in Pratt City. Stories within stories ending in jumps to another story in another time and place.

But it’s not the time-shifts that are distracting, it the overuse of metaphors. There are paragraphs of them. I started seeing them multiply along with the expanding generation-tree. As Gyasi herself writes “The family is like the forest: if you are outside it is dense; if you are inside you see that each tree has its own position.”.

I could forgive the grating metaphors. However the book failed to grab me. Especially in the early slave scenes where descriptions didn’t capture the period or place adequately. Early descriptions such as that of life in the British slave dungeon lacked substance and I remained outside, never feeling that the events were real though knowing they were.

A mediocre novel, adequately written, worth the effort if you have the time and don’t mind a mountain of metaphors. ( )