‘Homegoing’ Is A Sprawling Epic, Brimming With Compassion

Homegoing

Reading: ‘Homegoing’ Is A Sprawling Epic, Brimming With Compassion

by Yaa Gyasi Hardcover, 305 pages | purchase

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photograph a ball glowing with places of particular misery, pain or malefic : Auschwitz, Nanking, Hiroshima, Wounded Knee. Burning white hot would be a singular landmark in west Africa : Cape Coast Castle, a ill-famed entrepôt for the cross-Atlantic slave trade. contemporary pilgrims — Barack Obama among them — guess there for sobering lessons on man ‘s atrocity to serviceman ; the dungeons where the enslave laic shackled in concert, awaiting their destine, to exit via the “ Door of No Return. ” In Homegoing, a first novel that brims with compassion, writer Yaa Gyasi begins where the awful Middle Passage began for therefore many, at the “ glowing white ” castle, one of about forty commercial fortresses erected by Europeans on the Gold Coast. The structure looms like a curse over Gyasi ‘s sprawling epic poem of african families exploited by — and at times exploiting — the dealings in human chattel, tracing the 300-year-long repercussions of an original sin. Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into the Fante and Asante tribes of eighteenth century Ghana. The book follows their families, with consecutive chapters mining stories from each lineage. Effia ‘s descendents remain in Africa, warring and intermarrying with members of different tribes. Esi is enslaved by an american planter. The polyphonic lives of the African and african-american offspring shape the novel ‘s compel narrative arc ; in the end, it is the Ghana-born Gyasi who so artfully accomplishes her own home-going .

James Collins, the newly appointed governor of Cape Coast Castle, pays an enormous sum as a bridget give to Effia ‘s family. He spirits her murder to live at his slaver ‘s domain, where Effia finds such luxuries as comfortable apartments, full-to-bursting warehouses, a parade grind, and a chapel. “ Effia walked around with James in complete awe, running her hands along the ticket furniture made from wood the color of her forefather ‘s peel, the silk hangings thus smooth they felt like a kiss. ” Beneath Effia ‘s feet lies a different world entirely, demonic and hidden. She feels the fetid cinch flowing upward through air out holes for what her british conserve calls “ cargo. ” Among captives stacked in the dungeon like arouse is the fifteen-year-old Esi, who in a bite detail “ could feel the woman on acme of her make. It traveled between both of their legs. ” The buy princess above and the anguished slave below become the twin ancestral mothers of Homegoing, the mitochondrial Eves for the saga ‘s sprawling cast of characters. More lives thread through ‘Homegoing ‘s pages, in a narrative that is earnest, well-crafted even not excessively self-conscious, fantastic without being precious .
Quey, Effia and James ‘s son, educated in England at the end of the eighteenth hundred, is tormented when he attempts to return to the african pubic hair. Ness, Esi ‘s daughter, is stolen out of her mother ‘s arms and shipped to a series of punishing plantations in Alabama. She is whipped so frequently that “ her scar skin was like another body in and of itself, shaped like a homo hugging her from behind with his arms hanging around her neck. ” Another of Esi ‘s descendents becomes a sort of John Henry figure known as “ Two-Shovel H, ” sold into peonage after being imprisoned. He takes pity on a white colleague in a Birmingham coal mine and with his own shovel in one hand and the other man ‘s shovel in the other, “ filled both men ‘s quotas, the colliery boss watching all the while. ” More lives thread through Homegoing ‘s pages, in a narrative that is earnest, well-crafted however not excessively self-conscious, improbable without being precious. Fine details continue to build each individual ‘s earth, like the glassine deck of heroin one fictional character stashes in his horseshoe in 1960s New York City, “ a reassurance ” to this baffled soul.

Meshing the streets of Harlem and the Gold Coast of Ghana in the pages of one fresh is a remarkable accomplishment. Yaw, one of the book ‘s twentieth century descendents, teaches a class of african adolescents, whom he urges to think deeply about history : “ You must always ask yourself, whose story am I missing ? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth ? once you have figured that out, you must find that floor, besides. ” In Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi has given rare and epic voice to the missing and suppressed. Jean Zimmerman ‘s latest novel, Savage Girl, is out now in paperback. She posts daily at Blog Cabin .