BOOK REVIEW: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

I was BLOWN AWAY by Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi! I was drawn in right away by Gyasi's descriptive and detailed writing style which reminded me a bit of the writher Paul Theroux's style. 

I wish I could say that I read Homegoing straight through and without big breaks, but a friend and I picked it up and decided to read it together back in mid-April when Covid-19 shutdowns were still somewhat new in the United States and we were all still figuring out how concerned we should be. I figured, "Hey, I'll likely have plenty of time to read!" 

And, I did...

But, as I really started to get into the book, I found myself having to slow down and step away a few times because some of the descriptions are so vivid and difficult to read that I had to take a few breaks. And, as I stepped away from the book a few times, the pandemic really ramped up in the United States, followed quickly by the murder of George Floyd and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests -- including protests in my city of Portland, Oregon.

My friend and I could not have predicted the protests, nor the huge surge in interest in reading and learning about racism and bigotry, shopping Black-owned businesses, and so on, so it was coincidental that the book we'd chosen to read was written by a Black woman. And, her novel is rooted deep in the history of slavery. 

Homegoing follows two lines of a family through a pair of half-sisters in 18th century Ghana. The sisters are separated with one being captured and sold into slavery, eventually resulting in a family line in the United States and the other marrying an Englishman who happens to be part of the slave trade but with her line staying in Ghana. 

Gyasi weaves two familial lines together by alternating between them every other chapter. Each chapter follows the life of one generation of the family from the 18th century to near-modern day with the final chapter wrapping up the entire story in a way that I won't spoil for you here other than to tell you this: the end is PERFECT. I don't know that I've read many (if any) books where the ending is so perfectly crafted and makes so much sense. That alone makes Homegoing worth reading.

The novel includes views of the slave trade from the point of view of Ghanian villagers, British slave traders, and those captured and forced into slavery, and shows quite forcefully just how strongly the past clings to the present. Gyasi deftly weaves the lingering echoes of slavery and all of the institutionalized racism that came with it and still exists today into every chapter. Her characters feel complete and real. Those of the last few decades feel like people I might see walking down the city street -- I could picture them and hear them so clearly. 

Even though the two family lines diverge for many, many generations and across two continents, the way Gyasi wrote her story shows the deep connections between the two. What's also interesting about her novel is that you could read it straight through, as my friend and I did, or you could read one story line first and then the other. In fact, I plan to re-read it following one story line and then the other soon. 

I HIGHLY recommend Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi! Some descriptions and events in the book are definitely hard to read (the conditions of the dungeon in which slaves are kept, whippings, and so on), but every word of this book has importance and bearing on the entire novel. 

Have you read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi? What did you think of it? Drop a comment and let me know!

You can buy the novel HERE on Amazon or HERE on Bookshop.org.