This post does not contain spoilers.
Once in a while I come across a great book quite by accident , that reminds me how much I enjoy a good story. Jhumpa Lahiri’s Lowland was one like that, which my friend lent to me when I was visiting her and her new baby. The children’s book Wonder by RJ Palacio was another that I would never have read if it weren't for another friend directly sending me a pdf of the book over Whatsapp. Phillip Roth’s The Plot against America was another very good book that was picked up randomly in a book sale when I recalled seeing the author’s name in the news when he had passed. OK maybe this is exactly how most people choose their books and there is nothing accidental or serendipitous about these things, but I’m always pleasantly surprised and gratified when I read a good book that I didn’t actively seek out.
I’ll need to now add Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel Homegoing to this list. It was the pick of my local library’s book club. I currently live in the town of Burlington Massachusetts, and they have a wonderful public library that’s entirely free for all kinds of residents(I say all kinds because this is not something restricted to citizens of the US and someone like me can take full advantage of this). I had always wanted to go to one of these book clubs, just to see what they’re like. But I’d always be too late to either get my hands on one of their books , or if I did get it, I’d just not be able to finish it on time for the meeting.But this time, quite by chance I saw their promotional email the moment it was sent and after a quick Google search about the book,I was immediately interested and asked the library for a copy, which they let me have the very next day.
Homegoing is categorized as historical fiction and is set both in Ghana and in America.It tells the story of the origin of slave trade in Ghana through the characters of two half sisters Effia and Esi . Esi is sold as a slave to work on the cotton plantations of the American South.While Effia leads a relatively comfortable life as the wife of a British governor, the head of the contingent of British citizens who live in Ghana to administer the slave trade with various European countries and the USA.The book follows the lives of the sisters and the children they go on to have and the differing destinies of their respective lineages owing to the circumstances in which they are each born or brought into.
What I’ve known about African slavery in America is only through big hit Hollywood movies (Django Unchained, 12 years a slave), some episodes of Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast about the Jim Crowe era in the South and some news articles. While the movies are excellent dramas and the wonderful actors give you a real sense of what it is like to be an enslaved person, its quite something else to read a book like Homegoing where we are taken through the lives of several characters living though the nearly 250 year time period starting from when the slave trade began in the mid 1700s right up to modern day America where people of color continue to face various forms of discrimination.
What I particularly liked about the novel is, even though it deals with some of the worst acts of humanity, it never gets preachy or overly weepy. The reader simply bears witness to the sometimes gut wrenching and sometimes bittersweet stories of the characters.This is definitely a hard book to read, almost all of the characters from various periods in history go through different forms of hardship.I had to sometimes put the book away in frustration from there being a total lack of hope at the end of each chapter. But I could not have just given up because on the whole it's a riveting novel and I couldn't wait to find out how it ends. From reviews I’ve read about the book,I got to know that this is one of the first books that fully implicates some of the African tribes in enabling the slave trade.It was fascinating to learn about the some of the different peoples of Ghana - the Fantes , the Asantes and their destructive internal conflicts that work to enrich the slave traders- both the Africans and Europeans.It reminded me of stories of how the British colonizers had aimed to foment the tensions among different castes in India in order to gain further control of the land.
Homegoing is exceptionally instructive without making the reader feel like they’re reading a history lesson. The author has spoken in some interviews about having visited the Cape Coast castle in Ghana which was one of her main inspirations for the novel. I learnt from the book that the British lived in the upper stories of this castle and kept slaves in the most unimaginable conditions in dungeons below the castle before ships would come to take them away to America. This castle is one of the focal points of the novel as it imagines the stories of the lives of people who lived here or were connected to it in many ways.
Cape Coast Castle - Ghana
One of my favorite parts of this book is the chapter on a character who works almost all of his adult life as a coal miner in America. He was arrested and incarcerated at a time when it was common to arrest Black men for things like, not crossing the street when he saw a white woman walking towards him or looking at a white woman’s face. And we are taken through his life as a prisoner forced to work in sometimes life threatening conditions, deep in the bowels of the earth to extract coal. Mining coal is the only employable skill he has picked up and he decides that's what he wants to do even after being released from prison. The depth of detail in the narration of this character’s story is exceptional and I felt completely convinced that I was reading about a real person. It goes to show the author’s high quality of research and her writing expertise to depict a character whose life must be so entirely different from her own.
I did finish this book on time to attend the book club but I wouldn’t say I had the best time here. I’m not very good with group discussions. It's one of my least favorite things in the world to draw attention to myself when I want to say something in a group. I wished they had gone around in the group in an order to let everyone have their turn to talk. Obviously in casual groups such as these, no one is obligated to do this. The raise hand functionality on Zoom was ignored completely and people were just talking over and responding to each other. But it was really interesting to hear the perspective of Americans who were sympathetic to the history of the Africans and one who even called out that the White race(hers) should absolutely feel guilty for this part of their history.
If it hasn’t been obvious so far, definitely recommend this book!
Image sources:
Homegoing front cover image from goodreads.com
Cape Coast Castel image from afrotourism.com
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