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Homegoing: A Novel
Unavailable
Homegoing: A Novel
Unavailable
Homegoing: A Novel
Audiobook13 hours

Homegoing: A Novel

Written by Yaa Gyasi

Narrated by Dominic Hoffman

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

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.

Editor's Note

Ambitious and engrossing…

Well written and compulsively readable, “Homegoing” is also illuminating; the novel makes clear that as far as our country has come, the roots of racism that built it go deeper still. An ambitious and engrossing debut novel.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 7, 2016
ISBN9780451484185
Unavailable
Homegoing: A Novel

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Reviews for Homegoing

Rating: 4.330080718707941 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

1,486 ratings135 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A neat structure and a real page turner but ultimately quite disappointing. None of the daring of Cloud Atlas, or the emotional heft of other recent plantation literature. Good in flashes though
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I guess I'm a little disappointed. It's not a novel for starters. It's a collection of vignettes, each 20-30 pages long, each feeling like it was workshopped into existence at a residential MFA course.

    The writing is fine and the stories are moving but I couldn't get over the sense that these were unfinished stories and that ending them and jumping forwards in time was a cheat.

    I never read Roots but I watched it on TV and was deeply affected by it. I did read The Joy Luck Club which is an obvious touchpoint for this book. I am not questioning the authenticity of Homegoing, I'm just suggesting that there is little new here.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A very well-conceived and well-written novel. Honest and beautiful. Thank you, Yaa Gyasi!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    So, one of the big things I noticed about this book was the Africans had as much to do with the slave trade as the Europeans and Americans. They made deals with the white men to sell them slaves, and through most of the book continued to do so. They were constantly capturing other tribes and selling them off.

    The first portion of the book was really good The characters were richly drawn, and I felt immersed in their world. Then comes the next chapter, and we are thrown into a new world, years later, with new characters. It was a little jarring to say the least. Although all the characters are connected through blood, it was a bit like reading a bunch of short stories.

    The story that resonated the most with me was Willie's story. When her husband starts passing for white and leaves her it broke my heart. The ending was the weakest part of the book. I enjoyed the stories set in Africa. It was interesting to see a way of life different from my own.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is one of the best books about Africans I've ever read. The story starts in the 1700s in Africa and shows the struggle of those taken by ship to America as well as those that remain in Africa. If follows many generations from the same family to modern-day. Each chapter tells a story that is linked to all of the other chapters. It's an amazing piece of storytelling that is creative, thought-provoking, and deep.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    4.5 stars rounded up to 5. Heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. I'm amazed the author managed to keep this at just 300 pages, and would gladly have read another 300!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What a generational treasure trove this novel is!Two half sisters are born in two different villages in Ghana, unaware of each other. One is chosen to marry an Englishman and live at Cape Coast Castle. The other is captured and sold into slavery, being held in the same castle.We follow these girls and their descendants for eight generations. Some are still in Africa, others are in America. Really loved the passage through time and all of the repercussions that came with slavery and then the freedom (technically).
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A uniquely written story about two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, who grow up in separate villages in 18th century Ghana, never knowing each other. Effia marries a white British man and lives fairly comfortably in the Cape Coast Castle, while Esi is taken prisoner during tribal warfare and held captive underneath the castle, eventually sold into the slave trade. Homegoing is told in a series of alternating vignettes, with each short story tracing a portion of the life of one of the descendants of the previous generation. While Effia's descendants remain in Ghana, Esi is sold into slavery and shipped off to America, where her descendants grow up in slavery. Beginning in 1700's Ghana, this "saga" continues up to present day. I found that the hype surrounding this debut novel is justified. But be prepared: there are lots of characters, some with confusing names, and you almost need to take notes if you want to maintain a true understanding and feeling for this story. I read this on audio and didn't realize until over halfway through that there was a family tree PDF available for viewing. I regret that I hadn't printed it out earlier to make following the family lines a little easier. The printed version of the book has the family tree at the beginning, so that's helpful.Aside from the challenge of keeping everyone's story straight, this really is an excellent tale. The writing is wonderful -- Gyasi tells just enough of each character's story to really engage the reader, but also leaves a lot out for the reader to interpret him/herself. Each story is truly unique, but they blend together so beautifully. Though this book is somewhat autobiographical, it is obvious that the author did large amounts of research to capture each generation's struggles. Overall, an excellent debut and one I would highly recommend.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Over 8 generations of Africans in two separate strands of a family tree and the author allowed us to see each person intimately and empathetic ally!! Read this again. Sort of like Roots. Quote from the Akan: The family is like the forest:of you are outside it is dense; if you are inside you see that each tree has its own position.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A beautifully written story of two half-sisters and their descendants in both Ghana and in America. It's a side of the slavery story that I didn't know much about-- how tribal wars were exploited by white colonialists and abetted by the chiefs and their greed and jealousies. I was touched by the women in the story, their losses and loves...
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    We all felt this to be a very powerful book and the first time the "whole story" was told as a cohesive history from the Black perspective. Many "aha" moments and 'that explains it". This page turner describes the human indignity and horrors of slavery but leaves the reader with hope. The story lingers long after the last page.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A book you want to re-read as soon as you've finished, it reads like a series of interconnected short stories, each chapter taking you to a different generation or a different continent. Each character is crafted with exquisite precision as the novel takes you on a journey through the horrors of history to the reality of where that journey leads.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    4.5 stars. Don't do what I did and wait until three days before this book is due back at the library to start reading it. It's only 300 pages, but I think it's best enjoyed a chapter or two at a time! The story starts in Ghana with two half-sisters, and follows their family lines for 300 years as each chapter focuses on a character from the next generation.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Solid 4.5 stars. This is an epic, spanning several generations, but it doesn't drag--in fact, I would have happily read standalone novels about several of the characters. Oddly, the stories weaken a bit as they approach the present. After the rich, enveloping stories of slaves and slave traders crisscrossing the Atlantic, the story of Sonny in near-modern New York City felt very flat, almost preachy. But that bit of dissonance was a small price to pay for the voices I heard in these stories that I had not heard anywhere else.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An interesting way to tell the story...each chapter is a different person- generally the child of the the person in a previous chapter- alternating between Africa and the US. It took me a little while to get used to it, but I love the way it came together in the end.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It's impressive. Yaa Gyasi created a lot of unique and distinct lives, all connected. At some points, I wondered if I should read memoirs and personal accounts instead. At the end, I was wondering how someone who has a family tree feels reading the book. I know as much about my ancestry as Marcus.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One sister is born and raised in Africa, and eventually married to a member of English nobility. Another sister (half) is imprisoned and shipped to America to become a slave. Homegoing then traces the lives of those two women through 8 generations. The author uses the tool of a black opal amulet/necklace to follow the line of the African-raised sister; while the second sister is given a similar keepsake but has it robbed from her in the bowels of the prison she sits in prior to the slave ship. I realized a very nasty bias that I have from reading this book: the jacket description details the two families that grow up separately in Africa and America. I presumed the family in America would deal with a generation or two of hardship and then be relatively successful/happy/fulfilled, meanwhile the family in Africa would be subject to constant upheaval and pain. Truth is, while both histories hold their own atrocities, the African upbringing seems is the preferred environment. This topic deserves lots of fleshing out in a focused essay, but Gyasi I think purposely shows the burdens that were put on blacks when they were disgustingly brought to America, and how those burdens have evolved over the generations to still encumber black Americans today.A very enjoyable read (in this case, for me, a listen). Not sure many teen readers would pick this book, even with a killer summary from a their favorite librarian, but I do think the book is great reading for the college-bound. Was influenced to read this from finding it on the Freshman reading list for Stanford University.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This novel is told in parallel generations of two families. The author provides a helpful family tree for reader reference. Yaa Gyasi is a wonderful storyteller who vividly describes her characters experiences, making them easy to identify with.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book was wonderfully heartbreaking, moving, and hopeful. The stories behind this family was so beautiful. I loved the writing and the way that Gyasi could tell you someone's story in such a short amount of pages. I loved seeing both sides of history - in Ghana and then in the United States. The way that each generation of the two parts of the family lived was integrated so well and each corresponding chapter had subtle parallels. The writing was wonderful, full of intricacies, yet simple at the same time.

    You really just need to read this for yourself and experience it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Amazing. Both easy to read and incredibly difficult to get through. Took me forever cause I just wanted to savor every chapter.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an insightful examination of the individuals, the families, and the communities affected by events beginning with the slave trade in 18th century Ghana. Lives, loves, joys, and sorrows shared with great sympathy and understanding. A highlight of my recent reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "Stretching from the wars of Ghana to slavery and the Civil War in America, from the coal mines in the American South to the Great Migration to twentieth-century Harlem, Yaa Gyasi's novel moves through histories and geographies." I liked this but lost some of my reading momentum during the last few chapters.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Beautifully written novel beginning in Ghana with two sisters, unknown to each other, separated by chance. Effia finds herself as a bride to a white slaver; Esi, on the other hand, is sold into slavery and is sent to America. Effia's descendants remain in Ghana. The chapters alternate between the descendents of Effia and Esi. Each chapter paints a picture of the life of the descendants. Quey, the bi-racial son of Effia and James Collins is a "weak man" and his son, James Richard Collins, leaves the life of white slaving and marries Akosua but is considered an unlucky man. Abena, their daughter, is influenced by the white missionary church. Esi's life is hard as an American slave and her children and grandchildren have hard lives as coal miners in the South and domestics in Harlem. This novel gives a wonderful broad insight into the Black experience both in Africa and in America. What exactly is "Black"; is it the color of the skin or the culture? Beautifully written with minute details that tell so much, it is a wonderful book that should be read by all. We are all products of our ancestors: both the decisions they made and the situations they had no control over.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This will get major attention come awards season and rightfully so.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This debut novel is impressive for both its scope and the talent of its author, Yaa Gyasi. It is the story of two African half sisters, unknown to each other, whose descendants are followed through three hundred years. One branch begins with slave trafficking in Africa by both blacks and whites, while the other branch eventually ends up in America. Their powerful, inter-linked stories are told in separate chapters with characterizations and circumstances that are unflinching. It is a remarkable undertaking from a talent that will surely continue to soar.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Many who read do so in search of something, whether it's information, entertainment, affirmation or curiosity. The characters in Yaa Gyasi's novel Homegoing are searching for something as well. Most often, it is themselves or a sense of how they fit into the world.The story begins in the 1700s, on Ghana's Gold Coast, with two half-sisters. One is claimed by the commander of the Castle, where kidnapped Africans lay in squalor before they die or are transported across the ocean. The other is one of those women down in those dungeons of despair.Across the centuries to the present, each chapter is the story of one of the progeny of those women, with each line of descent taking alternating turns. The reader learns about lives in both Ghana and America as the years and tears roll by.The way the narrative is built shows several of Gyasi's writing strengths. The reader is immersed in what a life might be like for someone in each time period, in each place. But the focus is not a treatise on politics, economics, race relations or slavery.Instead, the focus is on how all of these things, in all of these times and places, could affect a person without defining who that person is. Each character is fully realized within the space of a short story, setting out on a journey whether it is what he or she seeks or not.What each character seeks is to be his or herself within the strictures of their lives. They suffer heartbreak, find love and sometimes find a fulfilling niche. Each story deserves its own space -- I could have easily read a whole novel about H, whose free mother was taken in Baltimore and who grew up in slavery.But each chapter also fits well within the overall narrative arc, which is best described by the title of the novel, Homegoing, rather than homecoming. Gyasi tells their stories with a lovely, engaging style. One of the characters is a dreamer, a seeker who isn't quite certain what she is after. Here's how Gyasi describes her days:But she wasn't just staring into space; she was listening to all the sounds the world had to offer, to all the people who inhabited those spaces the others could not see. She was wandering.Whether each character realizes it, she or he is wandering toward something. Gyasi's fulfillment of that search is a moving tribute to the different parts of herself, a person born in Ghana who is now a writer living in the United States, and someone as interested in history as she is in literature.That interest in history is, for the most part, something that is shown rather than told in the book. But one of the characters, a teacher in Ghana, has a way of engaging his students on the first day and making an important point for every reader as well:"Whose story is correct?" Yaw asked them. ..."We cannot know which story is correct because we were not there." ..."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 on the words of others. Those who were there in the olden days, they told stories to the children so that the children would know, so that the children could tell stories and so on. But now we come upon the problem of conflicting stories. ... Whose story do we believe, then? ..."We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study ask yourself, Whose story am I missing?"Whether each character finds what she or he is searching for, there is an arch to the search within the novel, to give us stories of those that have been missing.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    To be completely fair, I likely would have rated this book a lot higher if I had read it in print instead of listening to the audio-book (always a slightly different experience). As it was, I am left with less of the plot and more with striking scenes from this book likely to stick in my mind for some time - of a slave being whipped until she speaks English, of a freed man working in mines and told of the health risks, of families moving between apartments but never to the white neighborhoods, of a girl from Ghana being told she is "white" because of the way she speaks, and a scholarly man attempting to confront the anger and reality of his family's history. A striking and timely book to read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an ambitious novel that traces the lineage of two sisters through several different time periods, one set in Ghana, the other in America. The author introduces each generation in alternating chapters and incorporates the historical significance of each time period with wonderfully developed characters. She shows us that history really is storytelling, and that each perspective has meaning and value. As a history fan, I enjoyed all of the historical references told from the very personal viewpoints of each character.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Someone else's review: The hype surrounding this book is well-deserved. Gyasi's debut novel is epic - tracing a family divided by slavery from the 18th century up to the present. Her technique is to chose a family member from each generation as the focus, exploring how the history of the time impacts the family. The book begins on the African Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) in the 18th century. Two half-sisters (same mother), Effia and Esi, who never meet have very different fates. Effia is sold in marriage to a white slave-trader. After his death she moves back to her village. Her descendants stay in Ghana until the recent generations, dealing with white colonization and their tribal lives. Esi is captured an sold as a slave to America. Her descendants are slaves and then live the lives of African-Americans, experiencing escape from slavery, recapture into slavery, the life of a convict coal-miner, the Northern migration to Harlem, etc. It's amazing to me that such an all-encompassing book never feels rushed or too "on-the surface". This is a novel about deep connections and family and how the past affects the future, even without explicit knowledge of events. It could have gotten cheesy and deserving of eye-rolls in the hands of a lesser writer, but Gyasi uses fantastic subtlety while weaving these lives together. I'd actually love to reread this, because I was so enamored by the plot and characters that I'm sure I missed some of the connections and details. As with any book that switches point of view so often, there were certain stories that worked better than others. I favored the beginning stories over the most current and I also connected more to the American line of the family, probably because of familiarity with the cultural context. But I was amazed that she drew me in to each unique story and did this seamlessly, without losing the flow of the novel.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    LOVED this. It's an epic story of the slave trade and colonialism in West Africa and the effect of slavery and loss of identity in the US. Gyasi tells this story brilliantly through what amounts to linked short stories, moving generation by generation, and following two parallel paths - one in what is now Ghana and one in America. Both sides are tormented by fate and history and the struggle to build something better than what came before. The writing is beautiful and the stories are searing. I had a hard time putting this book down, and I know it will stay with me. I can't recommend it highly enough.