book review of homegoing by yaa gyasi

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'homegoing' is a sprawling epic, brimming with compassion.

Jean Zimmerman

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Picture a globe glowing with places of particular misery, pain or evil: Auschwitz, Nanking, Hiroshima, Wounded Knee. Burning white hot would be a singular landmark in west Africa: Cape Coast Castle, a notorious entrepôt for the cross-Atlantic slave trade. Contemporary pilgrims — Barack Obama among them — venture there for sobering lessons on man's inhumanity to man; the dungeons where the enslaved lay shackled together, awaiting their fate, to exit via the "Door of No Return."

In Homegoing , a first novel that brims with compassion, writer Yaa Gyasi begins where the horrific Middle Passage began for so many, at the "glowing white" Castle, one of about forty commercial fortresses erected by Europeans on the Gold Coast. The structure looms like a curse over Gyasi's sprawling epic of African families exploited by — and at times exploiting — the traffic in human chattel, tracing the 300-year-long repercussions of an original sin.

Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into the Fante and Asante tribes of 18th century Ghana. The book follows their families, with successive chapters mining stories from each lineage. Effia's descendents remain in Africa, warring and intermarrying with members of different tribes. Esi is enslaved by an American planter. The contrapuntal lives of the African and African-American progeny shape the novel's compelling narrative arc; in the end, it is the Ghana-born Gyasi who so artfully accomplishes her own home-going.

Author Interviews

Slavery scars a transatlantic family tree in 'homegoing'.

James Collins, the newly appointed governor of Cape Coast Castle, pays an enormous sum as a bride gift to Effia's family. He spirits her off to live at his slaver's demesne, where Effia finds such luxuries as comfortable apartments, full-to-bursting warehouses, a parade ground, and a chapel. "Effia walked around with James in complete awe, running her hands along the fine furniture made from wood the color of her father's skin, the silk hangings so smooth they felt like a kiss."

Beneath Effia's feet lies a different world entirely, hellish and hidden. She feels the fetid breeze flowing upward through air holes for what her British husband calls "cargo." Among captives stacked in the dungeon like kindling is the fifteen-year-old Esi, who in a stinging detail "could feel the woman on top of her peeing. It traveled between both of their legs." The purchased princess above and the tortured slave below become the twin ancestral mothers of Homegoing , the mitochondrial Eves for the saga's sprawling cast of characters.

Quey, Effia and James's son, educated in England at the end of the 18th century, is tormented when he attempts to return to the African bush. Ness, Esi's daughter, is stolen out of her mother's arms and shipped to a series of punishing plantations in Alabama. She is whipped so often that "her scarred skin was like another body in and of itself, shaped like a man hugging her from behind with his arms hanging around her neck."

Another of Esi's descendents becomes a sort of John Henry figure known as "Two-Shovel H," sold into peonage after being imprisoned. He takes pity on a white co-worker in a Birmingham coal mine and with his own shovel in one hand and the other man's shovel in the other, "filled both men's quotas, the pit boss watching all the while."

More lives thread through Homegoing's pages, in a narrative that is earnest, well-crafted yet not overly self-conscious, marvelous without being precious. Fine details continue to build each individual's world, like the glassine deck of heroin one character stashes in his shoe in 1960s New York City, "a reassurance" to this mixed-up soul.

Meshing the streets of Harlem and the Gold Coast of Ghana in the pages of one novel is a remarkable achievement. Yaw, one of the book's 20th century descendents, teaches a class of African adolescents, whom he urges to think deeply about history: "You must always ask yourself, whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story, too." In Homegoing , Yaa Gyasi has given rare and heroic voice to the missing and suppressed.

Jean Zimmerman's latest novel, Savage Girl, is out now in paperback. She posts daily at Blog Cabin .

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2016

New York Times Bestseller

by Yaa Gyasi ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 7, 2016

A promising debut that’s awake to emotional, political, and cultural tensions across time and continents.

A novel of sharply drawn character studies immersed in more than 250 hard, transformative years in the African-American diaspora.

Gyasi’s debut novel opens in the mid-1700s in what is now Ghana, as tribal rivalries are exploited by British and Dutch colonists and slave traders. The daughter of one tribal leader marries a British man for financial expediency, then learns that the “castle” he governs is a holding dungeon for slaves. (When she asks what’s held there, she’s told “cargo.”) The narrative soon alternates chapters between the Ghanans and their American descendants up through the present day. On either side of the Atlantic, the tale is often one of racism, degradation, and loss: a slave on an Alabama plantation is whipped “until the blood on the ground is high enough to bathe a baby”; a freedman in Baltimore fears being sent back South with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act; a Ghanan woman is driven mad from the abuse of a missionary and her husband’s injury in a tribal war; a woman in Harlem is increasingly distanced from (and then humiliated by) her husband, who passes as white. Gyasi is a deeply empathetic writer, and each of the novel’s 14 chapters is a savvy character portrait that reveals the impact of racism from multiple perspectives. It lacks the sweep that its premise implies, though: while the characters share a bloodline, and a gold-flecked stone appears throughout the book as a symbolic connector, the novel is more a well-made linked story collection than a complex epic. Yet Gyasi plainly has the talent to pull that off: “I will be my own nation,” one woman tells a British suitor early on, and the author understands both the necessity of that defiance and how hard it is to follow through on it.

Pub Date: June 7, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-101-94713-5

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: March 1, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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SEEN & HEARD

THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.

Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “ You’ll get only one shot at this ,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “ Don’t botch it .” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “ That form is a deal breaker ,” he tells himself. “ It’s life and death .” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.

Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016

RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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clock This article was published more than  7 years ago

‘Homegoing,’ by Yaa Gyasi: A bold tale of slavery for a new ‘Roots’ generation

One of the peculiar aspects of American slavery is how much we know and how much we willfully forget. Despite the vast body of historical research, works of fiction still inform most of what we understand (and misunderstand) about the grisly institution. Alex Haley's "Roots" — revived this season for another TV generation — gave millions of Americans their most visceral, sympathetic experience of slavery. Toni Morrison's masterpiece, "Beloved," seared into our imagination the grotesque distortions of antebellum life. And now, Yaa Gyasi's rich debut novel, "Homegoing," confronts us with the involvement of Africans in the enslavement of their own people.

Gyasi, who was born in Ghana and immigrated to the United States with her family at the age of 2, has spoken of Ghanaians' "complicity" with the British slave trade. That characterization should make us squirm not least because it's an argument used by Southern apologists eager to dilute the unique horror of American slavery: Everybody was doing it; even Africans were doing it! But, of course, that isn't at all Gyasi's point. She's merely asking us to consider the tangled chains of moral responsibility that hang on our history. This is one of the many issues that "Homegoing" explores so powerfully.

Review, ‘A Mercy,’ by Toni Morrison

The story begins in Ghana’s coastal Fanteland in the mid-1700s with two beautiful half-sisters who don’t know of each other. Effia is 15 years old when she attracts the attention of James Collins, the newly appointed British governor. Collins pays Effia’s father 30 pounds and takes Effia to the Cape Coast Castle. While she enjoys the upper floors of the governor’s mansion, her half-sister, Esi, also 15, finds herself trapped below in a dungeon among slaves awaiting transport to the New World. As hell’s anteroom fills up with bodies and waste, the survivors are regularly beaten and raped. “James never spoke to Effia about the slaves they kept in the dungeon,” Gyasi writes, and Effia feigns oblivion. “She had never thought of what James must think every time he saw them. If he went into the dungeons and saw women who reminded him of her, who looked like her and smelled like her. If he came back to her haunted by what he saw.”

The villagers have a saying about separated sisters: “They are like a woman and her reflection, doomed to stay on opposite sides of the pond.” The pond, in this case, is the Atlantic Ocean, and from Effia and Esi eventually grow “two branches split from the same tree.” Chapter by chapter, the book moves back and forth between them and their respective continents, jumping ahead a generation each time. That structure — essentially a novel in linked stories — places extraordinary demands on Gyasi. Each chapter must immediately introduce a new setting and new characters making fresh claims on our engagement. (The family tree at the front of the book is an invaluable reader’s crutch.) But the speed with which Gyasi sweeps across the decades isn’t confusing so much as dazzling, creating a kind of time-elapsed photo of black lives in America and in the motherland.

It’s no criticism of the latter chapters to say that the earlier ones are particularly haunting. To some extent, this reflects the unusual subject matter of these stories set during the first infernal arrangements between the British and the natives along Ghana’s coast. If some tribes and clever tribal leaders profited by turning over black flesh, Gyasi also encourages us to consider what choice the Africans ultimately had to refuse their determined and technologically advanced business partners from the West.

This paradox is embodied in the life of Quey, the biracial son of Effia and Gov. Collins. “Like the other half-caste children,” Gyasi writes, “he could not fully claim either half of himself, neither his father’s whiteness nor his mother’s blackness. Neither England nor the Gold Coast.” Nevertheless, because of his status — complicated further by his secret homosexuality — Quey finds himself working as a slaver’s representative, charged with persuading his uncle to sell human chattel only to his company. It’s a devastating story that manages to capture the degradations of slavery among the enslaved and the enslavers.

Review: ‘Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings’

The chapters set in America involve more familiar events, perhaps, but are no less moving. “Kojo” opens on the eve of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. The story that unfolds conveys both the intense thrill of free blacks in Baltimore and the unimaginable terror of losing one’s liberty — or one’s family members — at any moment. In this episode and all the others, there’s a courageous lack of sentimentality, an absolute refusal to allow good and evil to be distributed along color lines. Although most of the characters in “Homegoing” are black, the whites and Africans who populate this world are equally capable of kindness and nobility, savagery and weakness.

Gyasi, who is just 26 and reportedly received more than $1 million for this book, has developed a style agile enough to reflect the remarkable range of her first novel. As she moves across the centuries, from old and new Ghana and to pre-Civil War Alabama and modern-day Palo Alto, Calif., her prose modulates subtly according to time and setting: The 18th-century chapters resonate with the tones of legend, while the contemporary chapters shine with clear-eyed realism. And somehow all this takes place in the miraculous efficiency of just 300 pages.

During a chapter set in the mid-20th century, a teacher in Ghana tells his students, “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 always ask yourself, whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth?” Gyasi has found several of those suppressed people and given them voices that are truly captivating.

Ron Charles is the editor of Book World. You can follow him on Twitter @RonCharles .

Read more :

History’s engaging new ‘Roots’ is faithful to the original and woke to the present

By Yaa Gyasi

Knopf. 305 pp. $26.95

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Descendants

By Laura Miller

In Yaa Gyasi’s début novel, “Homegoing” (Knopf), a boy greeting the line of mourners at his grandfather’s funeral encounters a beautiful girl. “Respectfully, I will not shake the hand of a slaver,” she says, withholding the customary gesture of condolence. The boy, James, is dumbfounded. Both of them are West Africans, members of the Akan people, although she is Asante, from the interior of what we now call Ghana, and he is Fante, from the coast. “James had spent his whole life listening to his parents argue about who was better, Asante or Fante, but the matter could never come down to slaves,” Gyasi writes. “The Asante had power from capturing slaves. The Fante had protection from trading them. If the girl could not shake his hand, then, surely, she could never touch her own.”

“Homegoing”—the title is taken from an old African-American belief that death allowed an enslaved person’s spirit to travel back to Africa—is rooted, like the Bible, in original sin. Unlike the Biblical transgression, however, the source of the curse that dogs an Asante woman’s descendants through seven generations defies pinpointing and straightforward assessments of blame; you might as well shun your own hand. The wrongs done emerge from the muddled ethics typical of domestic quarrels, but their repercussions are vast. As one prophetic character puts it, “sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your home.”

Here’s how it starts: Sometime in the late eighteenth century, Maame, an Asante slave in a Fante household, flees into the bush during a fire, leaving behind her newborn daughter, who survives. Soon afterward, Maame marries an Asante “Big Man” and gives birth to another girl. The older daughter, Effia, stays behind in Africa, as the wife of a British official; her half sister, Esi, once the pampered darling of a powerful father, is captured by raiders from another village, sold to the British, and brought to America. Each chapter of the novel is narrated from the perspective of a descendant of either Effia or Esi, one representative for each generation, and the two bloodlines alternate up to the present day.

This ambitious form and Gyasi’s determination to scrutinize the participation of West Africans in the Atlantic slave trade are the novel’s chief strengths. Gyasi, who was born in Ghana and raised in Alabama, is twenty-six and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The bolder works of young novelists, like the more stylized performances of aging actors, often look better from a distance than in closeup, where cracks in the foundation start to show. Taken in as a panorama, “Homegoing” can be breathtaking. Marcus, Esi’s great-great-great-great-grandson, pursues a Ph.D. in sociology at Stanford and strolls through a San Francisco art museum, but feels that his grip on his middle-class life lacks strength and significance: “The fact that he had been born, that he wasn’t in a jail cell somewhere, was not by dint of his pulling himself up by the bootstraps, not by hard work or belief in the American Dream, but by mere chance.” He doesn’t know Esi’s name or her story, a gap that only someone who has read the preceding three hundred pages can fully appreciate.

Meanwhile, Marjorie, Effia’s descendant, who meets Marcus at a party in California, possesses her full family history, both in the usual way, as a collection of stories linked by genealogy, and in the form of a stone pendant, handed down from generation to generation. Maame gave a similar pendant to Esi, but the girl lost it in the fetid, nightmarish slave dungeons under Cape Coast Castle, the British fortress presided over by her half sister’s husband.

Perhaps because “Homegoing” is more a collection of linked stories than a conventional novel, Gyasi tries to achieve continuity by leaning hard on recurring symbols like the stone pendant. Her American characters, in particular, lead lives starved of self-directed narrative, their fates dictated by people, institutions, and historical forces over which they have no control. Sometimes even their oppression lacks the consistency that enables effective countermeasures. There isn’t much humor in “Homegoing,” but the best of it comes from Marcus’s sardonic father, Sonny, who feels that “the problem with America wasn’t segregation but the fact that you could not, in fact, segregate. Sonny had been trying to get away from white people for as long as he could remember, but, big as this country was, there was nowhere to go.” Unfortunately, Sonny’s surly intelligence—which could have been the makings of an indelible character—is overshadowed by a litany of experiences and traits that the novel takes to be emblematic of the male African-American experience in the late twentieth century. Sonny neglects the three children he has fathered with three different women. He works for the N.A.A.C.P., gets involved in the Harlem jazz scene, becomes a heroin addict, and so on. These episodes feel less like the emanations of a coherent personality than like boxes that must be checked to make sure that Sonny represents a generation of black men.

The rest of Gyasi’s American characters suffer from similar demographic imperatives. The John Henry-like sharecropper H., nicknamed Two-Shovel, for a feat he performed as a convict worker in a coal mine, stands for the hardships of the Jim Crow South and the multiracial utopianism that briefly flourished in some corners of the labor movement. His daughter, Willie, embodies the Great Migration, sings gospel, marries a light-skinned man who deserts her to pass for white, has her own skin subjected to the paper-bag test, and takes in a minstrel show while she’s at it.

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Gyasi has conscientiously assembled the furniture of each of these American historical periods, but she never seems quite at home in them. The farther back in time she goes, the more prone she is to jarring anachronisms. For example, a shipwright living in eighteen-fifties Baltimore thinks of his family and reminds himself that “he had made a promise to Anna that he would be there for them, the way his own father had not been able to be there for him.”

The novel’s African characters, on the other hand, rarely come across as walking, talking history lessons. Their idiosyncratic lives transpire against the backdrop of the great Asante empire, which dominated the Gold Coast for two centuries, a reign punctuated by bloody clashes with neighboring peoples and the British colonizers. None of Effia’s descendants play major roles in that saga, but tantalizing rumors of it seep into their stories: an exiled king, a warrior queen, a British governor’s head exhibited on a stick. Human trafficking was funding, and tarnishing, the empire’s glory; every battle against a neighboring village—often incited by European slave traders—and every cross-border raid becoming a potential source of prisoners who could be sold to the British and the Dutch. Doing profiteering one better, this system turned war itself into a means of production, guaranteeing that conflict would never end.

When that beautiful girl rebuffs James (Effia’s grandson), she explains that, having lost three brothers to the Asante wars, she wants no more of any of it. “I will be my own nation,” she declares. James abandons his future as the leader of his own village to run off with her and start over, to be a modest farmer in “a small village where no one knows us.” This makes for a romantic ending to his chapter, but by the time the novel turns to his daughter, Abena, James has become an old man, barely subsisting on a meagre plot of land where, “season after season, the earth spit up rotted plants or sometimes nothing at all.” His neighbors nickname him Unlucky and have no interest in marrying his probably cursed daughter; she, in turn, blames her father for her spinster status and takes great pride in the “Asante soldiers’ valiant battles against the British, their strength, their hope for a free kingdom.” Gyasi deftly uses the alternating compression and expansion of time built into her novel’s structure to summon the fantasy of retreat into love and family, and then to show how history will, inevitably, trample that dream.

Too often, however, Gyasi struggles to make the linked-story form suit her epic enterprise. There are significant challenges to overcome, not least the lack of a central character to arrest the reader’s attention and carry it through the book. Each chapter must start in a new place and time, with a new set of people, at best picking up a few slender narrative threads from its predecessors. Linked stories aren’t the ideal way to deliver the amount of exposition that historical fiction requires. (It’s never a good sign when a novelist feels obliged to begin a bit of dialogue with “As you know by now, Quey . . .”) A novel has the room to work complications and variations on situations or characters, compelling readers to reassess them again and again. The short story is always in danger of reducing people to types, and Gyasi succumbs to this more than once. (“Like the other half-caste children, he could not fully claim either half of himself, neither his father’s whiteness nor his mother’s blackness.”) She also has a bad habit of forcing an interpretation that any intelligent reader is perfectly capable of picking up on her own: “Marjorie reached for the stone at her neck. Her ancestor’s gift.”

Gyasi’s prose, too, is largely undistinguished. And yet there are flashes of quietly thrilling authority in the pages of “Homegoing.” She displays a particular knack for evocative repetition. A young man lies awake at night in a hut, trying to imagine how he might live discreetly with the man he desires: “The toad croaked. There was a way. There was no way. There was a way.” A detail from Sonny’s drug-using days conveys the addict’s compulsive, secretive rumination:

Sonny kept a glassine bag of dope in his shoe. It was a reassurance. He walked the many blocks between his house and his mother’s house with his big toe clenched around the bag as though it were a small fist. He’d clench it, then release it. Clench it, then release it.

This shows the unmistakable touch of a gifted writer, and “Homegoing” is a specimen of what such a writer can do when she bites off more than she is ready to chew. Rough as it is page by page, hampered as it is by a form that would daunt a far more practiced novelist, “Homegoing” succeeds, by the end, in accumulating no small emotional power. Extraneous to the novel itself, but not irrelevant to its fate, is the seven-figure advance that is said to have resulted from a ten-bidder auction before last year’s London Book Fair. That makes “Homegoing” what publishers call a “big book,” the object of promotion and marketing campaigns designed to present it as the glorious flowering of a precocious talent. It isn’t. For all the enthusiasm that regularly attends literary débuts, more often than not it isn’t the first book that realizes the extent and the depth of a writer’s talent; it’s the third or fourth. If, in this light, “Homegoing” disappoints, Gyasi’s readers will have to learn to do what her characters do: wait for the spirit to find its way home at last. ♦

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Book Review: 'Homegoing' by Yaa Gyasi

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“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” wrote James Joyce in Ulysses . Yaa Gyasi, a writer with a rich talent for visceral story-telling, is part of the wake-up crew.

If I were still teaching high school English, I would assign Gyasi’s Homegoing to my students in East Oakland and Southeast San Diego — and were I able, I’d assign it to every American this July. While we live among white supremacists supporting Donald Trump , the posting of fascist propaganda around the Bay Area, the historical amnesiacs that deride Black Lives Matter as an anti-police domestic terrorist group and young white people slowly waking up to the privileges afforded by certain skin tones, the book is timelier than ever. Mostly, I am thankful to read this ambitious, expansive new novel at this exact moment in American history.

Homegoing is the first novel for Gyasi , an Iowa Writer’s Workshop graduate who lives in Berkeley. It begins in 16th century Ghana and ends 250 years later, in the new millennium. During that time, as we know, more than 10 million Africans were forced into captivity between the 15th and 19th centuries; it’s one of those factoids that’s repeated in history books so often the magnitude becomes unreal. Homegoing , like Toni Morrison’s Beloved , brings those numbers to life, and returns the ocean of dead bodies back to the forefront of modern consciousness. None of my ancestors, as far as I know, were forced to endure the Middle Passage , but while reading, I couldn’t help but contemplate how my own ancestral history connected to the sickening era of slavery.

Ancestral curses and inheritances lie at Homegoing’s core. The novel opens with a fire raging in the woods outside of a Ghanaian chief’s compound, and a birth. We later learn that the fire was set by Esi and Effia’s mother, Maame, on the night of Effia’s birth. It’s her only chance to escape enslavement in Fanteland and further rape by the village chief. Effia is left behind to be raised by her father’s first wife, Baaba, a cruel woman who resents her beautiful adopted daughter. Maame escapes home to Fanteland, where she starts a new life, gives birth to Esi, and tries to live in peace, but the serenity doesn’t last.

The village is invaded by a warring tribe and 15-year-old Esi is captured and sent to Cape Coast Castle, where British slave traders and government officials live in opulence, and where hundreds of captured Africans subsist in a dungeon, before being forced onto a ship and taken across the Atlantic to be sold to the highest bidder. In America, according to one African slave trader, the brutality is far beyond anything in Ghana — “unfathomable,” as one character puts it.

Esi’s half-sister Effia experiences a very different fate. Married to a British man, she goes to live in the luxurious upstairs quarters of the Cape Coast Castle, along with other local women who have married white men. Soon after her arrival, Effia hears moans coming through cracks in the floor. She’s disturbed by the sounds and asks her new husband about it. Effia will never know that her own half-sister is one of those people trapped in the mud-walled, windowless, feces-drenched dungeon. Soon, Esi will be forced into heinous conditions on a slave ship across the Atlantic, but not before she is raped by one of the white jailers — a sign of the atrocities to come.

“What’s below?” she [Effia] asked James, and the mangled Fante word that came back to her was “cargo.”

With that one word, cargo, humanity is brutally split in two. It’s a legacy that continues to haunt America into the 21st century. As Sarah Jaffe writes in her new book Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt :

Modern capitalism was born out of and then fueled by slave labor and then by coal, more coal, and oil. Indeed, the sweat and strain of enslaved people served as substitute for fossil fuels in the American South, part of the reason that the South industrialized so much later than the North. Black people, wrenched from their birthplaces to labor at the end of a whip, were a reliable power source for hundreds of years before slavery was eliminated — and in England, when it was eliminated reparations were paid not to former slaves but to the people who owned them. That money was pumped back into the coal-fired plants that made the industrial revolution possible.

“Theirs was the kind of life that did not guarantee living,” says Ness, the daughter of Esi, now a slave on a Southern plantation, whip-scarred by an owner she calls only The Devil.

Gyasi neatly crams 300 years of history into Homegoing , a feat achieved by giving each character just one chapter. The descendants of Esi and Effia grapple with major developments in Africa and America. For Ness’s son Kojo, who lives in Baltimore as a free man with his wife Anna and children, it’s the Fugitive Slave Act, which tears his family apart. As he watches his daughter Beulah sleep, he wonders when the nightmare, for black Americans, will end.

Maybe this was where it started, Jo thought. Maybe Beulah was seeing something more clearly on the nights she had these dreams, a little black child fighting in her sleep against an opponent she couldn’t name come morning, because in the light that opponent just looked like the world around her. Intangible evil. Unspeakable unfairness. Beulah ran in her sleep, ran like she’d stolen something, when really she had done nothing other than expect the peace, the clarity, that came with dreaming. Yes, Jo thought, this is where it started, but when, where, did it end?

In the chapter that follows, H, the son of Kojo and Anna, is imprisoned for not paying a $10 fine, forced to work in coal mines for free as part of a prison chain gang. H somehow survives, marries, and has children with the woman he loves, and becomes a union activist. In another chapter, his daughter Willie migrates to New York where she and her husband, who passes white, are torn apart by strict racial lines and white privilege. Willie’s son Sonny, an activist and NAACP worker, gives up on the fight and turns to heroin as a solace. His son Marcus, a graduate student at Stanford, closes out the book with a return to the Cape Coast Castle.

The African history in the novel is just as powerful, holding to the fire the conscious role of Europeans in creating a war-torn and broken African continent. As in this passage:

James knew the British had been incited tribal wars for years, knowing that whatever captives were taken from these wars would be sold to them for trade. His mother always said that the Gold Coast was like a pot of groundnut soup. Her people, the Asantes, were the broth, and his father’s people, the Fantes, were the groundnuts, and the many other nations that began at the edge of the Atlantic and moved up through the bushland into the North made up the meat and pepper and vegetables. This pot was already full to the brim before the white men came and added fire. Now it was all the Gold Coast people could do to keep from boiling over again and again and again.

Back in America, as we’ve seen this year with the deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Philando Castile in Minnesota and five police officers in Dallas, race still means something in America. The use of race as a implement of power runs deep, long, and wide.

Until every American embarks on a major soul-searching about the venal, sordid racial history of the United States, and their own position in relation to it, the bloodshed, tears, and anger will keep on. Let Homegoing be an inspiration to begin that process.

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Look Inside | Reading Guide | Teacher’s Guide

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By Yaa Gyasi

By yaa gyasi read by dominic hoffman, category: historical fiction | literary fiction, category: historical fiction | literary fiction | audiobooks.

May 02, 2017 | ISBN 9781101971062 | 5-3/16 x 8 --> | ISBN 9781101971062 --> Buy

Jun 07, 2016 | ISBN 9780735208193 | 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 --> | ISBN 9780735208193 --> Buy

Jun 07, 2016 | ISBN 9781101947135 | 6-1/4 x 9-1/4 --> | ISBN 9781101947135 --> Buy

Jun 07, 2016 | ISBN 9781101947142 | ISBN 9781101947142 --> Buy

Jun 07, 2016 | 791 Minutes | ISBN 9780451484185 --> Buy

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May 02, 2017 | ISBN 9781101971062

Jun 07, 2016 | ISBN 9780735208193

Jun 07, 2016 | ISBN 9781101947135

Jun 07, 2016 | ISBN 9781101947142

Jun 07, 2016 | ISBN 9780451484185

791 Minutes

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About Homegoing

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE’S JOHN LEONARD PRIZE • WINNER OF THE PEN / HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION • Ghana, eighteenth century: two half sisters are born into different villages, each unaware of the other. One will marry an Englishman and lead a life of comfort in the palatial rooms of the Cape Coast Castle. The other will be captured in a raid on her village, imprisoned in the very same castle, and sold into slavery. One of Oprah’s Best Books of the Year, Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem. Yaa Gyasi’s extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed—and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.

Winner of the NBCC’s John Leonard First Book Prize A New York Times 2016 Notable Book One of Oprah’s 10 Favorite Books of 2016 NPR’s Debut Novel of the Year One of Buzzfeed’s Best Fiction Books Of 2016 One of Time ‘s Top 10 Novels of 2016 “ Homegoing  is an inspiration.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates  The unforgettable New York Times best seller begins with the story of two half-sisters, separated by forces beyond their control: one sold into slavery, the other married to a British slaver. Written with tremendous sweep and power, Homegoing traces the generations of family who follow, as their destinies lead them through two continents and three hundred years of history, each life indeliably drawn, as the legacy of slavery is fully revealed in light of the present day.             Effia and Esi are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle’s dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast’s booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of  Homegoing  follows Effia’s descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day,  Homegoing  makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.

Winner of the NBCC’s John Leonard First Book Prize A New York Times 2016 Notable Book One of Oprah’s 10 Favorite Books of 2016 NPR’s Debut Novel of the Year One of Buzzfeed’s Best Fiction Books Of 2016 One of Time ‘s Top 10 Novels of 2016 “ Homegoing  is an inspiration.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates  The unforgettable New York Times best seller begins with the story of two half-sisters, separated by forces beyond their control: one sold into slavery, the other married to a British slaver. Written with tremendous sweep and power, Homegoing traces the generations of family who follow, as their destinies lead them through two continents and three hundred years of history, each life indeliably drawn, as the legacy of slavery is fully revealed in light of the present day.             Effia and Esi are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle’s dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast’s booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of  Homegoing  follows Effia’s descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day,  Homegoing  makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.  Includes a PDF of the Family Tree

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About Yaa Gyasi

YAA GYASI was born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. She holds a BA in English from Stanford University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she held a Dean’s Graduate Research Fellowship. She lives in Brooklyn.YAA… More about Yaa Gyasi

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Winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for Outstanding First Book Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction Finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction Runner-up of the 2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize in fiction Longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize Nominated for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize A New York Times Notable Book • A Washington Post Notable Book • A Time Top Novel • An Oprah Favorite Book • A Guardian Best Book • An Entertainment Weekly Best Book • A Buzzfeed Best Book • A BBC Best Book • An Esquire Best Book • An Atlantic Best Book • A Kirkus Reviews Best Book • An NPR Best Book • A Harper’s Bazaar Best Book • An Elle Best Book • A Paste Magazine Best Book • A Jezebel Best Book • An A.V. Club Favorite Book • A British GQ Best Book • A Popsugar Best Book • A Financial Times Best Book “Homegoing is an inspiration.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates “Spectacular.” —Zadie Smith “Powerful. . . . Compelling. . . . Illuminating.” — The Boston Globe   “A blazing success.” —Los Angeles Times   “I could not put this book down.” —Roxane Gay “Devastating. . . . Luminous.” —Entertainment Weekly   “A beautiful story.” —Trevor Noah, The Daily Show “Spellbinding.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune “Dazzling. . . . Devastating. . . . Truly captivating.” — The Washington Post “Brims with compassion. . . . Yaa Gyasi has given rare and heroic voice to the missing and suppressed.” —NPR   “Tremendous . . . Spectacular. . . . Essential reading.” — San Francisco Chronicle “Magical. . . . Hypnotic. . . . Yaa Gyasi [is] a stirringly gifted writer.” — The New York Times Book Review “Powerful. . . . Gyasi has delivered something unbelievably tough to pull off: a centuries-spanning epic of interlinked short stories. . . . She has a poet’s ability to pain a scene with a handful of phrases.” — The Christian Science Monitor “Thanks to Ms. Gyasi’s instinctive storytelling gifts, the book leaves the reader with a visceral understanding of both the savage realities of slavery and the emotional damage that is handed down, over the centuries. . . . By its conclusion, the characters’ tales of loss and resilience have acquired an inexorable and cumulative emotional weight.” — The New York Times “[Toni Morrison’s] influence is palpable in Gyasi’s historicity and lyricism; she shares Morrison’s uncanny ability to crystalize, in a single event, slavery’s moral and emotional fallout. . . . No novel has better illustrated the way in which racism became institutionalized in this country.” —Vogue “Gyasi gives voice, and an empathetic ear, to the ensuing seven generations of flawed and deeply human descendants, creating a patchwork mastery of historical fiction.” — Elle “A remarkable feat—a novel at once epic and intimate, capturing the moral weight of history as it bears down on individual struggles, hopes, and fears. A tremendous debut.” —Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment “Rich. . . . Fascinating. . . . Each chapter is tightly plotted, and there are suspenseful, even spectacular climaxes.” — Vulture  “[A] commanding debut . . . will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading. When people talk about all the things fiction can teach its readers, they’re talking about books like this.” — Marie Claire “ Homegoing weaves a spectacular epic. . . . Gyasi gives voice not just to a single person or moment, but to a resonant chorus of eight generations.” — Los Angeles Review of Books “Moving. . . . Compelling. . . . Gyasi is an enormously talented writer.” — The Dallas Morning News “I cannot remember the last time I read a novel that made me want to use the adjective perfect. . . . Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing is a feat rarely achieved: a book with the scope of world history and the craft of something much smaller. . . . The cumulative effect is staggering.” —Molly McArdle, Brooklyn Magazine  “Carrying on in the tradition of her foremothers—like Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat, Assia Djebar and Bessie Head—Gyasi has created a marvelous work of fiction that both embraces and re-writes history.” —Paste “Impressive . . . intricate in plot and scope. . . . Homegoing serves as a modern-day reconstruction of lost and untold narratives—and a desire to move forward.” — Miami Herald “Heart-wrenching . . . . Yaa Gyasi’s assured Homegoing is a panorama of splendid faces.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution “A remarkable achievement, marking the arrival of a powerful new voice in fiction.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Luminous. . . . The author thrillingly depicts her characters’ migrations from mud-hut villages to Harlem’s jazz clubs to Ghana’s silvered beaches, celebrating how place and fate shape us all.” — Oprah .com “Epic . . . a timely, riveting portrayal of the global African Diaspora—and the aftereffects that linger on to this day.” — The Root “An emotional, beautiful, and remarkable book. . . . Homegoing is stunning—a truly heartbreaking work of literary genius.” — Bustle “An important, riveting page-turner filled with beautiful prose, Homegoing shoots for the moon and lands right on it.” — Buzzfeed

Audie Awards WINNER 2017

National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize WINNER 2016

PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel WINNER 2017

Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction FINALIST 2017

PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize FINALIST 2017

British Book Award – Book of the Year (Overall) SHORTLIST 2018

Dylan Thomas Prize LONGLIST 2017

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Reviews of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

by Yaa Gyasi

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About this Book

• Reading Guide

Book Summary

Winner of the 2016 BookBrowse Debut Author Award A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation. Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi's magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer.

The night Effia Otcher was born into the musky heat of Fanteland, a fire raged through the woods just outside her father's compound. It moved quickly, tearing a path for days. It lived off the air; it slept in caves and hid in trees; it burned, up and through, unconcerned with what wreckage it left behind, until it reached an Asante village. There, it disappeared, becoming one with the night. Effia's father, Cobbe Otcher, left his first wife, Baaba, with the new baby so that he might survey the damage to his yams, that most precious crop known far and wide to sustain families. Cobbe had lost seven yams, and he felt each loss as a blow to his own family. He knew then that the memory of the fire that burned, then fled, would haunt him, his children, and his children's children for as long as the line continued. When he came back into Baaba's hut to find Effia, the child of the night's fire, shrieking into the air, he looked at his wife and said, "We will ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• Evaluate the title of the book. Why do you think that the author chose the word Homegoing? What is a homegoing and where does it appear in the novel? In addition to the term's literal meaning, discuss what symbolic meanings or associations the title might have in terms of a connection with our place of birth, our ancestors, our heritage, and our personal and cultural histories.
• Explore the theme of belief. What forms of belief are depicted in the book and what purpose do these beliefs seem to serve for the characters? Does the author reveal what has shaped the characters' beliefs? Do these beliefs seem to have a mostly positive or negative impact on the believer and those around them?
• What perspective does the book offer on the ...
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Indie Booksellers’ Choice Awards 2017

BookBrowse Awards 2016

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Reader reviews, bookbrowse review.

...This marvelous debut succeeds in creating an impressive sweep by the sheer dint of powerful writing and narrative scope. “In my village we have a saying about separated sisters,” Esi’s mom tells her. “They are like a woman and her reflection, doomed to stay on opposite sides of the pond.” An ambitious saga that moves back and forth across these “opposite sides of the pond” and weaves a rich and colorful tapestry, Homegoing is an emotionally resonant debut that hints at great things yet to come from an immensely talented storyteller... continued

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(Reviewed by Poornima Apte ).

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The ashanti nation and the gold coast slave trade.

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Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

If you enjoyed Wayettu Moore’s She Would Be King, you’ll love Yaa Gyasi’s Homecoming. There’s nothing like two books that complement each other. 

In Homegoing, we journey with the descendants of two sisters as Yaa Gyasi weaves a compelling tale of life in colonial Ghana, the blood-strumming struggle that birthed a nation.

One sister is tied by fate to a slaver, the other to a slave, and both their descendants are subject to different hardships at home and abroad.

What initially seems like a messy divergence ultimately converges. Homegoing portrays their struggles and how past lives can shape and influence an entire generation.

What I Liked

The author’s writing is smooth and easy to follow. The plot and progression are solid, with each flowing seamlessly into the next.

Homegoing also contains themes of belief, patriotism, violence, slavery, migration, myth… all the good stuff. For this book, I think the name “Homecoming” is very apt because of how the book ended on a good note- nothing too dramatic, peaceful even, I might add.

Homegoing will keep you in conversation with yourself throughout the read, such as the scenes where Ma Aku asks Kojo about right and wrong and where Yaw and Marcus delve into a bit of history and end up dissatisfied, among others.

Another plus was that it had pretty strong supporting characters like Fiifi and Akosua.

What I Didn’t Like

One thing I think this book didn’t do, in my opinion, was answer the questions it posed.

Questions were asked, and the reader was left to make their own conclusions,

Final Thoughts

I would classify Homegoing as heavy, per what Marjorie meant when she said, “a book you feel inside you.” Homegoing is one of those books. ‘

Still, I’d only rate it a 5 out of 10.

Hi I'm Tega, I am a microbiologist with a lifelong passion for reading, I fell in love with books as child (where I was briefly obsessed with Enid Blyton, lol) reading is simply my escape and hobby and sometimes doubles as therapy for me . My favorite genres are African lit, historical fiction, memoirs/biographies and fantasy. I do beta reading and post book reviews which you can check out on my Instagram @ te_ga_o.

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Yaa Gyasi: ‘Slavery is on people’s minds. It affects us still’

The Homegoing author on exploring her Ghanaian roots, being an immigrant in the US, and whether trauma can be imprinted on our DNA

Yaa Gyasi ’s debut novel, Homegoing , is an astonishing epic set in Ghana and the United States, about the legacy of slavery through generations. It attracted a seven-figure advance and has been described as “hypnotic” and “brilliant”, and its 26-year-old author as “stirringly gifted”

Why trace your story through the generations? I began Homegoing in 2009 after a trip to Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle [where slaves were incarcerated]. The tour guide told us that British soldiers who lived and worked in the castle often married local women – something I didn’t know. I wanted to juxtapose two women – a soldier’s wife with a slave. I thought the novel would be traditionally structured, set in the present, with flashbacks to the 18th century. But the longer I worked, the more interested I became in being able to watch time as it moved, watch slavery and colonialism and their effects – I wanted to see the through-line.

How did the dungeons make you feel? I was devastated. I felt immense rage. The dungeons still smell after hundreds of years. There was grime on the walls and a tiny air hole at the top. When they closed the door, there was no light. Hundreds of people were kept there for three months at a time before being sent God knew where. The terror they must have felt – not knowing what was to become of them. You can imagine and you cannot possibly imagine.

The subject of slavery has produced outstanding work from Toni Morrison ’s novel Beloved to Steve McQueen’s film 12 Years a Slave … And this year alone, in America, there has been The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead and Grace by Natashia Deón. Slavery is something we have not gotten over, it is on people’s minds and it affects us still.

Your novel raises interesting questions about identity – how has your identity been affected by place, circumstance and genes? Place has influenced me hugely. I was born in Ghana, grew up in America, have lived in Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, Alabama. I studied English and creative writing at Stanford and Iowa. So many people in the States grow up in one place and settle. It has been interesting, during this election, to register that places in America are vastly different and influence people’s ideologies. Getting to see that, having moved a lot myself, has been powerful.

And circumstance? My father is a professor of francophone African literature. My mum is a nurse. Had my parents not decided to emigrate to America, my life would have been completely different. One thing I ran up against a lot as a child was that saying “black” or “Afro-American” implies a certain cultural identity that was different from mine as an immigrant. I found it difficult to feel I was being black in the right way. The older I got, the more I realised there’s no right way, that everything I do and am is also allowed to be black. It took me a long time to realise that… the word “black” can seem to generalise everything.

And genes? We are shaped more than we know by our genes. Can trauma be imprinted on our DNA? I think trauma is inheritable.

Does suffering for black people change with every generation? Suffering changes and stays the same. In America, the worst was never over, just made new. That was something I was trying to trace in the novel – the trail of trauma reinvented. The history of America has involved figuring out new ways to subjugate black people since the beginning. In this post-election in-between space, as Donald Trump takes over, we are wondering what fresh hell may be about to be devised.

Are you religious? I wouldn’t describe myself as religious, although I was raised as an evangelical Pentecostal Christian in the south – a unique and fraught position. But my father would whisper: “Had the British not come to Ghana, who knows if we would be sitting here in church today.” So religion for me, growing up, was always tempered by colonialism.

Do you suffer survivor’s guilt? Ava DuVernay , the African American director, wears a shirt on which is written: “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.” So there is that feeling as well. How many hundreds of thousands of black people in this country had to die so that Ava DuVernay could sit in that director’s chair?

Are there great storytellers in your family? So many – starting with my parents, who told grand stories at parties – a general mode of communicating among west Africans who love large, proverbial narratives. I’m shy in person. I much prefer writing it to telling it. The closer I get to me and to the truth, the more uncomfortable I am.

A history teacher in your book advises listening out for the quiet voices. Is this what you are doing? Homegoing is very much about amplifying voices.

When you returned to Ghana, did you feel you belonged? It is a dual thing – you belong and you don’t. I remember the Ghanaian passport official reading my name correctly and it felt like the biggest, warmest welcome. At the same time, I understand my native language but don’t speak it. So I am necessarily at this remove – the country can never be fully mine.

And how does that make you feel? When I was young, I was anxious about the idea that so many of these things end with me. If I have children, I probably won’t be able to teach them the language or teach them to cook the food. But as I have grown older, I’ve started to understand that I am allowed to forge this new identity that is more layered and more dualistic.

Where is home for you? It is a complicated question. Home right now is Oakland, California. But again I think I have known for many years that home, for me, can never really be a place. It is this thing that you carry inside of you, similar to these characters, particularly the Afro-American ones who have been ripped away from their original homes and yet have this connection to the land. Home is this little light that you carry inside you wherever you go.

After a novel as compendiously ambitious as yours, I can imagine you have earned a rest. Are you working on a second novel yet? I hope to write a second novel but am completely caught up in publicity. It is the first time in my life I’ve had to do anything like this. I have had to relearn to sit still, be quiet – and answer questions.

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Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – A book review

Book Name: Homegoing

Author: Yaa Gyasi

Genre: Fiction – Drama , History , Literary

Characters: Maame, Cobbe Otcher, Effia Otcher, James Collins, Quey Collins, Nana Yaa Yeboah, James Richard Collins, Akosua Mensah, Abena Collins, Ohene Nyarko, Akua Collins, Asamoah Agyekum, Yaw Agyekum, Esther Amoah, Marjorie Agyekum; Big Man Assare, Esi Assare, Ness Stockham, Sam, Kojo Freeman, Anna Foster, H Black, Ethe Jackson, Eli Dalton, Willie Black, Robert Clifton, Carson Clifton, Amani Zulema, Marcus Clifton

Setting:  Ghana , Africa ,  Alabama ,  The USA

The book begins in the eighteenth century Ghana where the slave trade by the whites is at its peak. Effia and Esi are half-sisters born in different villages in Ghana. And it is through the lives of their descendants that we get a glimpse of history of Black lives in Africa and America over the centuries.

Effia becomes the mistress to an Englishman and lives in the comparative comfort of his castle, where unbeknownst to her, Esi among thousands of other African slaves is entrapped and sold to the America.

Esi and her family form the American history as a part of Alabama’s cotton plantations, Civil War, the coal mining and the twentieth century’s Harlem dope houses, to the present day. On the other hand, Effia and her descendants stay back in the continent to initially take part in the slave trade enthusiastically to finally fight their enslavers over the course of generations.

To know more about this family saga coupled with the history of Black lives in America and the slave trade in Ghana, you will have to read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.

My initial thoughts

First off I have to say Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is going to be painful, hard and intense. This plot driven multi-generational family saga has too many characters and many African words to be an easy read.

The chapters are quite short, as is the book itself, and for a few it might read like a collection of short stories.

Okay now that I have warned you about everything that could put you off and have done my part to cast away the weak hearted’s, let us talk about Homegoing earnestly.

The subject matter of this semi autobiography, a risk you take when reading an Own Voice book, is the history of slavery and the drastic mistreatment of the Blacks over the centuries. True to the nature of the subject, Homegoing is painful and makes you wonder if we have moved forward at all.

Homegoing follows the seven generations of Effia and Esi alternatively, over two continents Africa and America – that is fourteen perspectives with our 250 years cover ground. And Yaa Gyasi does it effortlessly and so intricately in about 300 pages that I can’t believe that it is her debut novel.

We believe the one who has 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? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there you get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture. Yaa Gyasi,  Homegoing

Personal rambling

I would go as far as telling that Homegoing had such an impact in me that I, not only had a book hangover for the next two days but also made me introspect on the effect of British oppression had on us as Indians and me as a person, in such a way that I had never thought of before.

My heart broke when Marcus tries to find his ancestors and could only reach till his grandfather H. I wished I could tell him the tales of his forefathers and that he finally reached his place in Ghana. Rarely, I get all emotional over books and I keep it objective and the point in my review, but guys, this book!!

In reality, that is literally what was done to him and the other millions of Blacks, we have uprooted them for personal gains, erased their history, not to speak of the atrocities their ancestors had to go through as slaves and second and third class citizens, and now we are still shooting them cuz of the color of their skin.

What worked for me

• I loved how each story connected to the next generation so that we don’t miss the flow at all. I loved how the stone traveled generations to reach the other half of the family.
• The writing was simple but yet so empathetic. It was so realistic that it made me feel like I know Ghana and the coal mines in Alabama, personally.
• The way the slavery and colonialism, racism and the violence of it all were written made an impact in me that my history texts never it.
• I loved that everyone I know who read this book had a different favorite character. Each of them were so well written that I can’t pick one how much ever I tried.

What may have been better

• I wish the stories of the recent generations were little bit longer. Obviously, they were great as they are but I just wanted to spend a little more time knowing them.
• If you are not a fan of plot driven books, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi may not work for you.

Bottom line

If you are mildly interested in knowing the history of slavery, British colonialism or history of Black slaves in the USA, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi should be your choice.

This historical fiction about seven generation family saga will satisfy both your fictional and history thirst! I will be reading more from the author definitely.

Go pick Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi already. Get your quota of reading towards Black lives matter and books by BIPOC about BIPOC or whatever other counts you have, but READ THIS BOOK.

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Let’s chat

Have you read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi? If yes, how did it fare for you? What other books have you read lately towards BLM by BIPOC authors? Let us talk.

Share this:

This sounds like something I would love too 😍 great review!

Yes, let me know when you get to it.

I love that feeling when I pick up a book and know right away that it’s gonna be amazing. And you know a book is good when it not only impacts you but also really makes you think about something, about the world. Sounds like this was written in an interesting way with the different stories. I’m glad it turned out to be so good!

I loved this one, thank you!

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Gayathri has been reviewing books since 2010. When she is not reading books or creating online content, she works as a writer and a digital marketer. Head over to meet me!

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Homegoing: A novel Hardcover – Deckle Edge, June 7, 2016

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• Print length 320 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Knopf
• Publication date June 7, 2016
• Dimensions 6.67 x 1.13 x 9.52 inches
• ISBN-10 1101947136
• ISBN-13 978-1101947135
• Lexile measure 910L
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From school library journal, about the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf; First Edition (June 7, 2016)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1101947136
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1101947135
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 910L
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.38 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.67 x 1.13 x 9.52 inches
• #158 in Black & African American Historical Fiction (Books)
• #1,560 in Family Saga Fiction
• #5,528 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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About the author

Yaa Gyasi was born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. Her debut novel, Homegoing, was awarded the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for best first book, the PEN/Hemingway Award for a first book of fiction, the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35” honors for 2016, and the American Book Award. She lives in Brooklyn.

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Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

• Publication Date: May 2, 2017
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction
• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Vintage
• ISBN-10: 1101971061
• ISBN-13: 9781101971062
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Read Your Way Through Accra

Bus stations. Traffic stops. Beaches. There’s no telling where you’ll find the next story in Accra, Ghana’s capital. Peace Adzo Medie shares some of her favorites.

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By Peace Adzo Medie

Read Your Way Around the World is a series exploring the globe through books.

Accra is rich with stories, some of them only a few words long — Still Hustling; Work Hard and Dream Big; Short Ways Are Dangerous — and written in bold letters on the rear windows of tro tros, the ubiquitous minibuses that ferry residents and visitors around the city. These mantras are meant to represent the people who own the buses. But they also tell of life in Accra, and what it takes to make it in this vibrant city.

Accra, Ghana’s capital, is in the southern part of the country and borders the Atlantic Ocean. For centuries, its coastline has served as an entry point for people both from neighboring countries and from farther away. Ghanaian writers have found rich material in the city, the home of the Ga people. And writers from other African countries and the diaspora, such as Wole Soyinka and Maya Angelou, have called Accra home, even if only for a short time.

Though much of Accra’s creative activity has taken place in centers like the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, interest in stories and books permeates the city.

Merchants selling books line many thoroughfares. There is a good chance that, when you stop at a major traffic light, a bookseller, wares in hand, will come to your window and try to get you to buy at least one. Even bus stations can be a treasure trove. One of my favorite activities as a teenager was shopping for books at Kwame Nkrumah Circle, a busy bus station in the heart of the city, where volumes are neatly arranged in stalls or on canvas spread out on the ground. And when I didn’t have enough money for a book, Accra still came through for me: I could always read and imagine the stories behind the one-liners on the buses idling nearby.

What should I read before I pack my bags?

Nii Ayikwei Parkes’s “ Tail of the Blue Bird ” brings the city to life. This slim novel is set in Accra and Sonokrom, a small village. Kayo, a forensic pathologist working in Accra, has been forced by a high-ranking police officer to investigate a sinister discovery in the village.

The novel’s lyrical prose and rich dialogue, which incorporates Ghanaian words and phrases, make it delightful to read. Through Kayo’s work, outings with friends and encounters with the police, we see different aspects of life in Accra, while his time in Sonokrom and interactions with the village’s intriguing inhabitants offer a glimpse of how people outside the center relate to the city.

If you prefer nonfiction, Ato Quayson’s “ Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism ” offers an excellent introduction to the city. It takes the reader on a journey through Accra’s history, showing its evolution from a fishing village to a port town during British colonial rule, to a vibrant metropolis that draws in people from around the country and the world. With Oxford Street, a bustling commercial corridor, as a starting point, Quayson evokes the sights and sounds of the city with keen attention to how people interact with each other and their surroundings. Forays into the salsa and gym scenes underline the transnational dimensions of life in Accra.

What books or authors should I bring along with me?

Accra is at the heart of Yepoka Yeebo’s “ Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World .” This work of nonfiction is a wild ride about one of the boldest scams of the 1970s and ‘80s, carried out by John Ackah Blay-Miezah, a charismatic Ghanaian. Blay-Miezah promised huge returns to thousands of investors from around the world, tied to a bogus trust fund allegedly set up by Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president. While Blay-Miezah targeted victims across the world, his dealings with government officials and other businesspeople in Accra facilitated his scam and, ultimately, contributed to its end. The book is a meticulously researched and riveting account of politics and money in post-independence Ghana.

Fictional stories of murder can also be doorways into Accra. In “ Sleep Well My Lady ,” by Kwei Quartey, a female detective’s investigation of a murder offers a glimpse into the lives of the rich and the not-so-rich of the city. In Kobby Ben Ben’s “ No One Dies Yet ,” Accra is the scene of mystery and sex, in a meeting of Ghana and its diaspora.

What books can show me other facets of the city?

There is always something to discover in Accra, even for people who are already familiar with the city. It helps to know the right people, though — or at least the right books.

“ Accra Noir ,” edited by Nana-Ama Danquah, is a collection of 13 stories set throughout pockets of the city. Their characters encounter the kind of sky-high hurdles that a thriving, cutthroat metropolis puts in the way of its residents — unemployment, corruption, abuse of power. And, determined to make it, these characters do not hesitate to adopt creative and extreme methods, often in places that are hidden from view: hotel rooms and bedrooms, dark alleys and a market at night.

Serena Owusua Dankwa’s “ Knowing Women: Same Sex-Intimacy, Gender, and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana ” is also about finding joy when the conditions are unyielding. It is a study of same-sex desire among women and of their relationships, which happen in every part of Ghana, yet aren’t typically visible in the open. The historical discussion of same-sex desire and intimacy in Ghana, and Africa more broadly, is illuminating, and dislodges widely held reductive ideas about the subject. Dankwa’s interviews with women, including female athletes, both in Accra and in a midsize town, reveal a great deal about desire and intimacy and the influences of class and social norms.

If I have no time for day trips, what books should I read instead?

Books of poetry are one way to travel around Ghana. Kofi Anyidoho’s collection “The Place We Call Home” is rhythmic in its treatment of history and the present. Anyidoho is also the editor of a book of poetry by another Ghanaian great, Kofi Awoonor. “The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems, 1964-2013” beautifully renders life in Ghana and abroad.

“The Girl Who Can,” by Ama Ata Aidoo, a writer with a towering legacy , is a collection of stories that explores girlhood and womanhood. Aidoo’s novel “Changes: A Love Story” chronicles one woman’s attempts to live and love on her own terms.

For books that take you on journeys into the past, start with Ayi Kwei Armah’s “The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born.” This classic of Ghanaian literature unfolds during the 1960s and follows an unnamed railway clerk determined to stay on the straight and narrow path — unlike others around him. “ The Hundred Wells of Salaga, ” by Ayesha Harruna Attah, is set in the 19th century. In this novel, the trade in enslaved people plays a major role in changing the lives of two young women. Yaa Gyasi’s “ Homegoing ” goes further back, to the 18th century, to narrate the outcomes of one family’s encounters with the West.

What’s a good place to curl up with a book on a day off?

Accra is a city of beaches and, in addition to sunshine and a cool breeze, a few of its waterfronts have the ambience that make for a good reading experience. But I’m partial to green spaces, many of which are beyond the city limits. Aburi, in the Eastern Region, is a short drive outside Accra. Situated on a hill, the town is cool and has several spots where you can curl up with a book while enjoying the lush scenery.

Peace Adzo Medie’s Accra Reading List

“Tail of the Blue Bird,” Nii Ayikwei Parkes

“Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism,” Ato Quayson

“Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World,” Yepoka Yeebo

“Sleep Well My Lady,” Kwei Quartey

“No One Dies Yet,” Kobby Ben Ben

“Accra Noir,” edited by Nana-Ama Danquah

“Knowing Women: Same Sex-Intimacy, Gender, and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana,” Serena Owusua Dankwa

“The Place We Call Home,” Kofi Anyidoho

“The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems, 1964-2013,” Kofi Awoonor (edited by Kofi Anyidoho)

“The Girl Who Can” and “Changes: A Love Story,” Ama Ata Aidoo

“The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born,” Ayi Kwei Armah

“The Hundred Wells of Salaga,” Ayesha Harruna Attah

“ Homegoing ,” Yaa Gyasi

Peace Adzo Medie is author of the novels “ Nightbloom ” and “ His Only Wife ,” which was a Reese’s Book Club pick and one of The Times’s notable books of 2020 . She is a professor at the University of Bristol.

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

How did fan culture take over? And why is it so scary? Justin Taylor’s novel “Reboot” examines the convergence of entertainment , online arcana and conspiracy theory.

Jamaica Kincaid and Kara Walker unearth botany’s buried history  to figure out how our gardens grow.

A new photo book reorients dusty notions of a classic American pastime with  a stunning visual celebration of black rodeo.

Two hundred years after his death, this Romantic poet is still worth reading . Here’s what made Lord Byron so great.

Harvard’s recent decision to remove the binding of a notorious volume  in its library has thrown fresh light on a shadowy corner of the rare book world.

Bus stations. Traffic stops. Beaches. There’s no telling where you’ll find the next story based in Accra, Ghana’s capital . Peace Adzo Medie shares some of her favorites.

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

What's new at the Mu? Big Read author to speak

The Massillon Museum will host a live keynote by “Homegoing” author Yaa Gyasi at 7 p.m. Thursday on the Massillon Museum's Facebook page. The online event will be free and open to everyone with no registration or Facebook account required. The audience can submit questions during the program or in advance to  [email protected] . 

“Homegoing” is the museum’s 2024 NEA Big Read book selection. 

Yaa Gyasi, a Ghanaian American novelist, earned a bachelor of arts in English at Stanford University and a master of fine arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a creative writing program at the University of Iowa. Her debut novel “Homegoing,” published in 2016, won her, at age 26, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for 2016, the American Book Award in 2017, and a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature in 2020.

MassMu and its NEA Big Read partners have distributed 1,100 free copies of “Homegoing.” During its 17 years of receiving a National Endowment for the Arts grant to participate in this prestigious national initiative, the Museum has provided 32,800 complimentary books to the community.

The Massillon Museum receives operating support from the Ohio Arts Council, ArtsinStark, and the citizens of Massillon. The Massillon Public Library has been, since Western Stark County’s first NEA Big Read in 2008, MassMu’s lead Big Read partner. Massillon Rotary Foundation and One Tiger are significant funders.

Why attend?

An initiative in partnership with Arts Midwest, the NEA Big Read broadens understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book. MassMu is one of 62 nonprofit organizations across the nation to be selected during this grant cycle to receive the prestigious NEA Big Read grant to support a community reading program.  

WHAT – MassMu’s NEA Big Read Keynote with Yaa Gyasi

WHEN – 7 p.m. Thursday.

WHERE – Massillon Museum Facebook Live

MORE – MassillonMuseum.org  or 330-833-4061

20 Must Read Books By Black Authors

Posted: March 8, 2024 | Last updated: March 8, 2024

You may not know all your authors since a lot of us do not choose our books by authors alone. We bring you a collection of 20 must-read books by black authors. These authors and their books take you on a sublime journey of their world. 

The Hate U Give (2017), by Angie Thomas

Angie Thomas was the first black teenager to graduate from her creative writing course, and ‘The Hate U Give' is her debut novel. This gripping young adult novel follows Starr, a young African American girl who witnesses the police shooting of her best friend. The novel focuses on race, identity, and activism.

Between the World and Me (2015), by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an American author and journalist, a black man with worldwide recognition for his unique work. Coates, in his book ‘Between the World and Me,’ pens down his perception of his feelings. The book is more of a powerful letter to his son about the complexities of being a Black citizen in America.

Kindred (1979), by Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler is an American novel and science fiction writer. She is widely known for her mesmerizing writing work. However, the one that holds the most attention and is a must-read is ‘Kindred'. The novel is about Dana, an African American woman who is involuntarily time-traveling.

Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), by Zora Neale Hurston

‘Their Eyes Were Watching God' is a classic by Zora Neale Hurston, an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. Her work in this book is rich in language and culture. The fictional story is all about love, independence, and self-fulfillment. For love story seekers, this is a must-read book by a black author.

Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison

‘Beloved' by Toni Morrison is a novel set after the American Civil War. This brilliant work of words explores the period after the war. The book explores the physical, emotional, and spiritual devastation wrought by slavery. The story premise is about an escaped slave, Sethe, whose daughter has died and she is haunted by her ghost. 

The Color Purple (1982), by Alice Walker

Alice Walker is a black author and the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction writing. Her work, ‘The Color Purple,’ is a prize-winning work that talks about resilience and sisterhood. The storyline focuses on an abused and uneducated African American and her struggle for empowerment.

Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), by James Baldwin

Some books are must-reads once in a lifetime, and ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain' is that for you. This semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of John Grimes and his bond with his family and the church. The book talks about the system of racism, religion, identity, and societal expectations.

Americanah (2013), by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

‘Americanah' is an award-winning novel that earned Adichie the 2013 U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award. The novel focuses on the main character, Ifemelu, a Nigerian woman navigating race and identity in America. Once you read half through it, you will come across an exploration of love, immigration, and the pursuit of the American dream.

The Souls of Black Folk (1903), by W.E.B. Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois fought for the independence of African colonies from European powers, and you cannot miss his work, especially as a black author. This book is an excellent work of American literature, with several essays on race, racial inequality, and more. The book is full of numerous sketches and essays.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), by Maya Angelou

‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' is one of Maya Angelou's best works of her lifetime. We know that she was loud and clear about civil rights and her dedication to being an activist. In this book, she describes her childhood days, talking about racism, trauma, and resilience at the heart of it. 

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995), by Barack Obama

We love Barack Obama for the chivalrous man he is. But the book ‘Dreams from My Father' is something else. It is an exceptional journey where he explains what being a Black man means in the West. He talks about racial authenticity and the politics of identity, and also covers many events from Chicago and Honolulu. 

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), by Malcolm X and Alex Haley

Malcom X had a traumatized childhood, filled with challenges from start to end. The book is an autobiography talking exactly about that: his life, his childhood days as a criminal and the memories he created when he was in New York and Boston. He also talks about his conversion to Islam and how he journeyed into activism. 

Queenie (2019), by Candice Carty-Williams

If you are craving something refreshing? Definitely go for this novel by Candice Carty-Williams. Featuring a Jamaican British woman as the protagonist, this book talks about relationships, friendships, sex, and race. But all with a hint of good humor. It is a wonderful play of words with facts right in your face. 

Homegoing (2016), by Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing is a must-read historical fiction novel. The novel is centered around two Ghanaian half-sisters and their descendants. Its storyline revolves around the effects of slavery and colonialism. Some concepts are powerful and can shake your thoughts. The book has won amongst critics’ circles.

The Wedding Date (2018), by Jasmine Guillory

‘The Wedding Date' is the debut novel of Jasmine Guillory, an American romance novelist. This spicy romance book is about a fake wedding date and how it can go the distance in a fun and flirty way. The multicultural romance will keep you hooked from start to end, maintaining your curiosity.

The Vanishing Half (2020), by Brit Bennett

Are you into historical fiction? If yes, then do read ‘The Vanishing Half' by Brit Bennett. It is the second novel by Bennett and appeared on the bestseller list of The New York Times. Although it is not appropriate for all, if you love thought-provoking exploration, do give it a read. 

If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), by James Baldwin

‘If Beale Street Could Talk' by James Baldwin is a classic from 1974. The book is a love story of a young couple who fall in love and get engaged, but later life takes a turn. The heart-wrenching storyline focuses on one of them getting falsely accused of the rape case.

Silver Sparrow (2011), by Tayari Jones

An amazing African American author, this novel by Tayari Jones centers around James, his two families, and the tangled web of their relationships. Everything you can think of, family secrets, bonds of fate and identity as a whole, this book is the perfect amalgamation of it. The twists and turns are what make it a must read for any bookworm.

The Underground Railroad (2016), by Colson Whitehead

This one is Colson Whitehead’s imaginative and powerful historical fiction novel. As you read the book, you reimagine the ‘Underground Railroad' as a literal network of secret tracks and tunnels. It is beyond a thrilling adventure. We loved the book as it explores the emotional and psychological impacts of slavery. 

An American Marriage (2018), by Tayari Jones

Once again, a masterpiece by Tayari Jones. It is a novel that digs into the heart-wrenching story of a couple torn apart by wrongful imprisonment. You get a deep exploration of love, loyalty, and injustice, with so much emotional depth. Jones' skillful portrayal of complex relationships and societal issues, takes you to a whole new world. 

The post 20 Must Read Books By Black Authors appeared first on SheBudgets .

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Yvonne Orji Developing Yaa Gyasi’s Novel ‘Transcendent Kingdom’ For Sony Pictures Television

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EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures Television has optioned the novel Transcendent Kingdom written by Yaa Gyasi to be developed by producer Yvonne Orji under her first-look deal .

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Orji is an Emmy-nominated, Nigerian-American comedian, actress, writer, producer and author who is best known for her performance as Issa Rae’s best friend ‘Molly’ on the HBO comedy series Insecure . For her performance, she earned an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 2020. Last year, she signed a two-year, first-look deal with Sony Pictures Television. Under the deal, she will develop scripted drama and comedy series for streaming and cable.

Most recently, Orji starred in the horror-comedy film The Blackening , as well as Vacation Friends 2 , the sequel to the 2021 Hulu comedy Vacation Friends . Previous credits include Malcolm D. Lee’s comedy, Night School and voice acting in the Netflix animated series My Dad the Bounty Hunter . She also served as a host and EP of the HBO Max reality series My Mom Your Dad and she released two HBO comedy specials: Momma, I Made It in 2020 and A Whole Me two years later.

She published her debut book, Bamboozled by Jesus: How God Tricked Me into the Life of My Dreams (2021) taking readers on a journey through 25 life lessons, gleaned from her own experiences and her favorite source of inspiration: the Bible. UTA and Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment rep her.

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