Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Penguin Readers Level 7: Homegoing (ELT Graded Reader)

Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

Penguin Readers Level 7: Homegoing (ELT Graded Reader) by Yaa Gyasi

53 reviews

readingwithcoffee's review against another edition

dark sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.75

This author could not go a single chapter with talking about women’s breasts and that’s before the one chapter where a man uses at least a. Paragraph to describe the ass of the woman he married and after she is kidnapped into slavery after the fugitive slave act is passed he literally sees her in other women regardless of ass based on if they have a big ass to the point a woman catches his attention to slap him for staring. On that end while a book that discusses Africans who will become Ghanaians and Americans will cover and discuss violence of all sorts into black Women especially sexual a lot of the violence to women in the book felt contrived and not taken that seriously or confused inherently for depth.

Many of the chapters felt like they were shoehorning American milestones or historical events or topics surrounding racism. As well as in my opinion using Ghanaian faith and religion at multiple points it mystically move a plot point forward the author clearly wrote herself into a corner for. I hated the mother burning all of her children but one alive scene in a dream, bc I don’t think the book took the murder of the daughters seriously especially to insist spirits made her do it when she literally did not know she did it. Also at times her protagonists had very ahistorical social norms where they’d either be the most special or educated or the most suffering or ostracized person among their environmental or all those things at once while clearly trying to represent general Ghanaian and Black American history it was very lazy and off putting to see constantly.

After reading it I’m not surprised to see a lot of reviews by Ghanaian nationals disliking the book or thinking it’s at least a mess of the Ghanaian cutler and history it tries to represent.

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fionafsw's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

This book was an epic spanning generations and continents, showing how we are the product of our history and how trauma doesn't get erased with every new generation but instead accumulates. Each character and her/his story was immensely interesting in and of itself and of course in connection with all the others to create a multi-century history featuring, through a feminist lens, the deepest shames of humanity (namely the slave trade and all related injustices). Well-written and a very rewarding read. I'd love to read more from Gyasi in the future.

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crybabybea's review against another edition

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reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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noahsingh's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective sad

4.25

Enjoyed a lot of aspects of this book:
- Love a family/generational story.
-Colonial resistance storylines were really interesting.
-Felt like I heard some perspectives I hadn't heard before, and learnt some historical stuff about the exploitation of black people post-slavery I hadn't heard about before.

Ending was a lil disappointing to me tho,

in the sense that I wish Marjorie had been aware of her families past a bit more through Akua and therefore somehow able to recognise Marcus as familiy

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sidekicksam's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

"We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study 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 story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture."

Following the line of descendants of two sisters who never met, each chapter is a snapshot of the life of another generation. One sister is sold into slavery, one marries a white man and remains free.

Now *this* is what I mean when I say I want to read a multigenerational family saga! Phenomenal. Astounding. Compelling. Captivating.

I already knew I loved Gyasi's writing style because Transcendent Kingdom is one of my favourite books, and I've been seeing nothing but raving reviews for Homegoing, but they all are true. The story is, despite it only showing a glimpse into every generation's descendant's life, so layered. It is incredible how she's able to write a character so well, despite only reading about their lives for about 20 pages.

Some multigenerational family sagas are daunting because of their size (The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois & Pachinko are both 500+ page chonkers and thus, quite intimidating), but this one is both manageable and easy to follow, so a great place to start if you're looking for a thought-provoking, immersive read that spans multiple decades.

Some quotes:

Quey sighed. So he would be here forever. The birds had stopped singing. Perhaps they sensed his exasperation. He looked at them, their blue, yellow, orange wings, their hooked beaks.
"Theere were no birds like this in London," Quey said softly. "There was no color. Everything was gray. The sky, the buildings, even the people looked gray."

"We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study 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 story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture."

Forgiveness was an act done after the fact, a piece of the bad deed's future. And if you point the people's eye to the future, they might not see what is being done to hurt them in the present.

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mirandalikesbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

My favorite part of this book is that every character is the main character. I was invested in every one. I don't understand how Gyasi was able to construct the life motivations of each character so perfectly with only giving each character like 20 pages. Seeing some of the characters age throught the generations is such a gift. Because so many wonderful characters had their life cut short as a product of white violence.

It is awe inspiring and heart breaking how many generations were and still are affected by slavery. How slavery has direct ties to the oppression and cyclical struggles of black people in America and in Africa. White oppression has killed generations of black joy.

This story demonstrates the struggle of being a woman so brilliantly too. How many generations of woman went undefined until a man defined her.

I learned so much through the course of this book. The birth of our modern prison industrial complex being born of the enslavement of African and Black men is something that makes perfect sense. But it was laid out so clearly here. Some of the violence was so vividly painted that I keep retracing those scenes in my mind. Some of the heartbreak too.

Absolute must read. We have been privileged to not know these stories for long enough. And we are privileged now to see these stories through the perspective of each of these characters.

Content Warnings