Novel on slavery takes a painful journey down memory lane
Homegoing is the debut novel of Ghanaian American writer Yaa Gyasi. Gyasi tells the story of two sisters; Effia and Esi, who were alive in West Africa’s Gold Coast and whose lives couldn’t be further apart in the 17th Century. PHOTO | NATION
What you need to know:
- Gyasi tells the story of two sisters; Effia and Esi, who were alive in West Africa’s Gold Coast and whose lives couldn’t be further apart in the 17th Century. One is sold into slavery and the other becomes the wife of a slave trader.
- If you have read Alex Haley’s famous novel Roots, you will be on familiar ground as the indoctrination of Africans happens. You meet a Kunta Kinte-like character called Sam who refuses to follow rules until love with his assigned wife Ness Stockham forces him to get with the program.
- The most tragic of the family members on the African side has to have been Akua Collins, who was raised by missionaries in Ghana. She discovers that those who raised her weren’t the best people for her and she marries Asamoah, and here she meets tragedy as a result of dreams that she experiences.
Book title:Homegoing
Author: Yaa Gyasi
Publishers: Penguin Books
Year of publication: 2016
Number of pages: 320 pages
Genre: Fiction
Price: Loot.co.za - R262, Amazon – US$12.35
Homegoing is the debut novel of Ghanaian American writer Yaa Gyasi. Gyasi tells the story of two sisters; Effia and Esi, who were alive in West Africa’s Gold Coast and whose lives couldn’t be further apart in the 17th Century. One is sold into slavery and the other becomes the wife of a slave trader.
The family tree at the start of the novel is a valuable tool as we see the seven generations of one family come and go. We see that they are carrying a curse that had been prophesied at the very beginning of the book. It could be the curse of the family or just one of being African. In Africa, the family members live their lives in the Gold Coast of Africa from missionary schools to village life and beyond. On the American side we see life for Africans during and after slavery as we get a quick history lesson from the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi, to mining town Pratt City and the dive bars of Harlem.
This is a very painful book to read as colonisation and its brutalisation is shown in all its ugly variants on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. The more well-known tale is of the prisoners of war who were taken on the middle passage and who were then subjected to brutalisation when they finally crossed to the other side. One thing about the slavery in the US, despite its brutal nature, was that there seemed to be logic to it. This was because it was designed to extract riches for people without compensation to those who were being exploited.
If you have read Alex Haley’s famous novel Roots, you will be on familiar ground as the indoctrination of Africans happens. You meet a Kunta Kinte-like character called Sam who refuses to follow rules until love with his assigned wife Ness Stockham forces him to get with the program.
THOSE LEFT BEHIND
Eventually, slavery is abolished but more awaits them as free men as the system makes their lives hell as they that aren’t as free as they could be. Nothing shows this breadth of the human experience on the US side as “H,” who was born in slavery when his mother committed suicide while pregnant with him and he was cut out of her belly. Slavery is abolished when he is an adult and he walks free; he would end up working in a coal mine in slave-like conditions as a convict.
From page 161: “It never occurred to H, during the many years that he worked on plantations, that there was anything more than dirt and water, bugs and roots under the earth. Now he saw that there was an entire city underground. Larger, more sprawling, than any county that H had ever lived in or worked in, and this city was occupied almost entirely by black men and boys. The city had shafts for streets, and rooms for houses. And in every room, everywhere, there was coal.”
His life continues as a free man when his prison term ends; he decided to continue working in the same mine this time for compensation and goes on to have a decent life.
Those who were in Africa weren’t spared either. At the beginning, the Africans trade slaves with Europeans until the latter decide to take over the land. No one was safe from the Europeans as the British subjugate the warrior kingdom of the Ashante and take over the whole area, part of which would be called Ghana at one point.
The most tragic of the family members on the African side has to have been Akua Collins, who was raised by missionaries in Ghana. She discovers that those who raised her weren’t the best people for her and she marries Asamoah, and here she meets tragedy as a result of dreams that she experiences.
From page 193: “Slowly Akua begun to speak. She slept rarely, but when she did, she would wander. Some days she woke up at the door, others curled up between her daughters. The sleep time was short, quick, so that as soon as she moved she was awake again. She would return to her place beside Asamoah, stare at the straw and mud of the roof above them until the sun began to peek through the cracks. Rarely, Asamoah would catch her in the night wanderings while he himself was in midsleep. He’d reach for his machete, then remember his missing leg and give up. Defeated, Akua thought, by his wife and his own misery.”
In spite of the pain, this book’s prose is so good that you are compelled to plough through the anguish these people are going through all their lives.
There are things that will bother the reader. The material in this book can fill 10 novels. Because of this, characters weren’t well developed as they leave the scene abruptly, after one has invested in them emotionally, to give way to the next generation in the book. This technique might work well for sitcoms, but this book leaves the reader hankering to know more about these rapidly changing faces.
