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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.
--front flap
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
African American Historical Fiction, saga, literary fiction, historical fiction, women, Ghana, slavery, African Americans, 18th century, historyPeople
Maame, Cobbe Otcher, Effia Otcher, Big Man Assare, Esi Assare, Quey Collins, Richard Collins, Ness Stockham, Sam, James Richard Collins, Akosua Mensah, Kojo Freeman, Anna Foster, Abena Collins, Ohene Nyarko, H Black, Ethe Jackson, Akua Collins, Asamoah Agyekum, Eli Dalton, Willie Black, Robert Clifton, Yaw Agyekum, Esther Amoah, Carson Clifton, Amani Zulema, Marjorie Agyekum, Marcus CliftonPlaces
Ghana, America, Gold Coast, Cape Coast Castle, Baltimore, Pratt City, Birmingham AL, Alabama, Harlem, New York CityTimes
18th century, 19th Century, 20th CenturyShowing 5 featured editions. View all 29 editions?
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Homegoing
2017-04, Vintage Books
Trade Paperback
in English
- First Vintage Books Edition (10)
1101971061 9781101971062
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Homegoing
2016, Random House Large Print
Paperback
in English
- First Large Print Edition (1)
0735208190 9780735208193
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Work Description
Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle's women's dungeon, and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, where she will be sold into slavery. Stretching from the tribal wars of Ghana to slavery and Civil War in America, from the coal mines in the north to the Great Migration to the streets of 20th century Harlem, Yaa Gyasi's has written a modern masterpiece, a novel that moves through histories and geographies and--with outstanding economy and force--captures the troubled spirit of our own nation.
--publisher's description
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First Sentence
Links outside Open Library
- The Guardian: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi review – the wounds inflicted by slavery
- The New Yorker: Descendants
- Wikipedia
- The New York Times: Isabel Wilkerson Reviews Yaa Gyasi’s ‘Homegoing’
- NPR: 'Homegoing' Is A Sprawling Epic, Brimming With Compassion
- The Washington Post: ‘Homegoing,’ by Yaa Gyasi: A bold tale of slavery for a new ‘Roots’ generation
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