“This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others.”
★★★★★
Homegoing is a generational tale, beginning with two sisters Effia and Esi. Effia is sold to a white slave trader as a wife, Esi is sold as a slave. The story follows them and their descendants through time, telling the story of a family with two very different endings.
Homegoing is beautiful. I knew from about a third of the way through that this would go on my list of my favourite books ever. I already cannot wait to read this again and pick up on even more. I adored the way in which we got a snippet of each characters life, from the good, to the bad, to the ugly. There is true heartbreak in this book, and you can feel it pouring off the pages as you're reading.
Because of the way it's written, it reads a bit like a series of short stories, albeit about the same characters. I don't think this detracts from the story in any way, but I did enjoy some more than others, as is often the case with short story collections. Ness, Kojo, and Yaw were my favourite stories, and I think Willie and Sonny were my least favourite. But collectively, the book makes for an incredibly powerful story.
The book covers so much history, it made me want to learn and read more. I don't know a lot about American history, and this briefly covers some very important parts of it, that I don't know nearly enough about. Yaa Gyasi is an incredibly talented writer, and I'm looking forward to reading Transcendent Kingdom, and everything else she writes.
Content warnings: racism, racial slurs, violence, human trafficking, slavery, sexual content, mental illness, drug use and abuse, murder, kidnapping, grief, death
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