Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – the shadow of slavery
When Yaa Gyasi published her debut novel Homegoing, she collected an astounding array of awards and accolades.
Homegoing won the NBCC’s John Leonard First Book Prize and NPR’s Debut Novel of the Year; was named a New York Times 2016 Notable Book and one of Time‘s Top 10 Novels of 2016. Oprah picked it as one of her 10 Favourite Books of 2016. With all those commendations I was expecting a very special novel.
Homegoing was certainly an ambitious undertaking, tracing multiple generations of descendants across two continents and four centuries. Holding the narrative together is the issue of slavery which casts its shadow over not just those individuals who are captured but also those who are responsible for the trafficking of humans. It’s an issue that sadly still resonates in the 21st century. Only last week the UK’s Guardian newspaper reported that nine African and Asian men had been taken into safety, suspected of being the victims of slavery aboard British scallop trawlers.
Yaa Gyasi’s portrayal of the effects of fate and the physical and mental scars that last through the generations, is breathtaking in its scope. But I still couldn’t help feel disappointed by the book overall.
The main problem is actually the broad scope of Homegoing. It opens in a village on the Gold Coast (we know the area today as Ghana), home to the Asante tribe and its powerful leader “Big Man”. When a British slave trader takes a fancy to his beautiful daughter Effia Otcher, Big Man sees an opportunity to cement relationships with the British rulers and get one up on the rival Fante tribe. Effia goes to live in a fort overlooking the sea. Under the castle, the dungeons are stuffed with slaves awaiting transit to Americas and the Caribbean. Unknown to Effia, among them is her older half-sister Esi Asare, captured during a raid on her own village. Effia stays behind in Africa, protected as the wife of a British official while Esi, once her father’s darling, is transported to America.
Each chapter of the novel is narrated from the perspective of a descendant of either Effia or Esi, one representative for each generation, via chapters that alternate the two bloodlines alternate right up to the 21st century.
And there you have the crux of my difficulties with this novel. Every chapter starts in a new location and time and introduces us to a completely new set of people with only a few references connecting one generation’s narrative to its predecessor. Gyasi does a superb job of creating characters that resonate but it seemed that no sooner had I warmed to this individual and picked up the threads of the history of their family, the ongoing rivalry between Asante and Fante tribes and subsequently the fight for freedom and equality among the enslaved in the USA, then it was onto the next chapter. I appreciated Gyasi wanted to give a panoramic perspective but it meant she had little time to develop any theme in depth. She touches on ideas but then glances away before they really have time to mature or for her to say anything remarkably new. Reading the book made me feel I was experiencing a continuous supply of appetisers instead of a full meal of a novel
To overcome the problem of such a discontinuous narrative and avoid Homegoing becoming more of a series of linked stories than a novel, Gyasi relies heavy on recurring symbols like the stone pendant the sister’s mother gives to each girl. Effia’s pendant is passed from generation to generation but Esi’s stone is dropped into the filth and excrement of the castle dungeon into which she is thrown upon her capture and is never recovered, a metaphor for the way slavery removes the individual’s connection to their past and robs them of their heritage.
I realise I am sounding very negative about this novel which is unfortunate and misleading. I did enjoy the book, most particularly because some of the characterisation was excellent. I also gained new insights about the ways in which tribal conflict played a significant role in facilitating the capture of individuals to feed the slave trade. Gyasi more than convinced me that she’s a talented author but I’m equally confident this is not the best she is capable of producing. I’m going to watch with interest what she does next.
Footnotes
About the author: Yaa Gyasi was born in Ghana but moved with her parents to the United States when she was two years old so that her father could complete his PhD studies. Homegoing was inspired by a 2009 trip to Ghana, after completing her sophomore year at Stanford, her first trip to the country of her birth since leaving the country as an infant.
About the novel: Gyasi started to write Homegoing shortly after graduating from Stanford, when she worked at a startup company in San Francisco. She continued working on it while studying for her MFA at Iowa university. It took Gyasi six years to write the novel. She received several offers from publishers but ultimately went with Knopf who gave her a seven-figure advance.
Why I read this book: I asked for this book as a Christmas present two years ago having heard so much about it but then didn’t get around to reading it until I joined a new book club this month which had chosen it for their December meeting.
I agree with you about the chapter break ups. It almost ruined the book for me as well. I loved how the book effectively portrayed the impacts the slave trade had on Africa as well as the slaves that were brought to America. Great review!
Also enjoyed the balanced approach in the way it showed that there was collusion by the local tribes in slavery
Yes! That was a bit surprising, in terms of how deep it went and explains reasoning behind the fracturing over the years.
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Interesting. I have this one in the TBR stack (because of the hype) and I’ve started it a few times but haven’t continued – by ‘started’ I mean I read a page or two, which I often do when I’m deciding what to read next. At some point I will push through and read it, if only to fill a country on my world reading challenge!
I sense from your comment Kate that the first few pages didn’t grab you enough to want to continue? Luckily this book does move rapidly
I completely agree with your concerns but also found it a worthwhile book overall, and I particularly liked seeing the Ghana side of the story as well as the U.S. I also liked seeing how one generation impacted the next, and maybe the sense of fragmentation was partly intentional. Nearly every generation is torn violently apart, which means the characters never have a sense of family identity (or in some cases even a name). My father lost almost all of his family in the Holocaust, and we know nothing about them, so this resonates with me.
Apparently she was concerned that the book could become too long but she still wanted to cover every generation so had to compromise on the length. There were aspects of the Ghanian culture I found interesting too, more so than the US aspects which I think is just down to the fact the latter is more well known.
I’m glad to be forewarned about some of the shortcomings, but still want to read this.
Completely understand Lori – despite some of the issues I had, I never felt that I wanted to abandon it
I bought this for a friend whose research area is novels by African women and she was equally disappointed. Hype has a lot to answer for.
it probably felt even more slight to her – I suspect a lot of those novels would deal with similar issues.
I thought it was a really good book. I struggled less with the shower dying characters and locations and more with some of the more harrowing parts of the story. Having said that I did think that the scope of it was sometimes a frustration – as it moved through descendants and generations I was really interested in some more than others and so wanted ‘their’ part of the narrative to be extended. I’d certainly be like you and happily read Yaa Gyasi again in the future.
Sorry about above – the joys of predictive text turned ‘shifting’ into ‘shower dying’!!!!!!
Me too Col, I wanted to linger with some of the characters and watch them deepen but no it was off to the next bunch ….
I haven’t read this one yet, wary of the hype, but had wondered about that structure. It sounds as if you’d have to have plenty of time to immerse yourself in it.
And that’s the key issue Susan – there wasn’t enough time to immerse yourself in anything
I agree with you totally. Everyone raves about this book but I couldn’t finish it. Just couldn’t maintain any hold on the narrative thread. Characters (with odd names) and relationships kept whirling before me with each chapter, the time span rushed forward. Too fractured for me.
The edition I had included an extremely useful generation chart at the beginning which I found I had to keep referring back to regularly because I couldnt keep track of how each person fitted in.
I had a similar experience with Annie Proulx’s Barkskins, which also covered many generations. Each time I got involved, the current generation died and I had to start all over again with a new set of characters. I’m afraid these sweeping generational books just don’t work for me…
Im beginning to think that multi-generational narratives are just not for me.
“Reading the book made me feel I was experiencing a continuous supply of appetisers instead of a full meal of a novel.” I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU MEAN! My husband’s work–a very wealthy university–just had their annual Christmas party, and it’s always dozens of appetizers! We get home and my brain thinks it’s hungry because I didn’t have dinner-dinner.
I recently read an article about a black woman who was thankful she had a black editor work on her book. She laments the way fiction by black men and women is pushed to be ABOUT race, and in many cases we end up with multigenerational sagas–like Homegoing. The black editor didn’t push her into a “race novel.” Actually, it all makes me think of my beloved Zora Neale Hurdton, who refused to write about race issues and was criticized as a result.
I’ve heard elsewhere that this book was over-hyped, leading to unfulfilled expectations. Jackie at Farm Lane thought it was more of a collection of short stories too.
I have it on my TBR but if I’m honest, I’ll probably never get round to reading it.