Reviews with content warning for Torture - Homegoing

"A hatred like a bag filled with stones, one stone for every year racial injustice continued to be the norm in America. He still carried the bag."

If you haven't read Yaa Gyasi's "Homegoing", please don't wait. It's a living, breathing history in such a pure form. Each character in the story is connected, in some ways big, some small, but Yaa does an amazing job pulling these stories together throughout, especially at the end!

If you dare to call yourself an ally to people of color, specifically black folx, consider this book required reading. I promise you won't regret it.

Content Warnings

mandkips's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

stephbakerbooks's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-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

Wow, this book. It’s so ambitious, and I don’t think I really knew what I was getting into, but it pulls it off SO well. There are fourteen main characters—seven generations—and we really only spend a snapshot of their lives with them, but man, Yaa Gyasi is a masterful writer and she makes you care about each and every one of them.

This is almost like a collection of short stories, with the thread of a family line connecting them to each other. And I loved following that line, seeing how what happened to their ancestors affected the new characters, and how so much of our lives are decided just by virtue of what family we’re born into.

It was an excellent book to listen to—though I am forever grateful for the PDF of the family tree that is included because I was referring to it constantly!

I loved Transcendent Kingdom by this author, but I think I loved this one even more, just because I’ve never read anything like this book. I’m excited for whatever Yaa Gyasi writes next!

Read if you like: character-driven stories, generational sagas, family trees, missed connections.

Content Warnings

kelseak96's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

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

5.0

Incredible. Gorgeous. Heartbreaking. Breathtaking. Everyone should read this book.

Content Warnings

maggiekateb's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

pclairx's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

milliebrierley's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful fast-paced

5.0

Content Warnings

jayisreading's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

I commend Yaa Gyasi for taking such a fresh approach to storytelling with Homegoing. It was an incredibly ambitious task, but one she handled phenomenally and with care to create two captivating intergenerational stories. The book starts with a split in a family lineage in present-day Ghana during the eighteenth century with two half-sisters, Effia and Esi. Homegoing, and it’s haunting, especially because it lingers in an unexpected way. Despite coming from the same mother, Effia and Esi never knew each other and led entirely different lives; one being married off to a British slave trader, while in the dungeons below, the other was enslaved and sent to the United States. From this point on and across seven generations, we get a chapter that gives a glimpse of each descendant’s life, often during significant moments in history (such as the Great Migration).

What was most powerful about Homegoing was the afterlives of every character playing a role in shaping their lineage. Through this, we see the repercussions of slavery and colonialism, resulting in the intergenerational trauma that would haunt for centuries (and, frankly, continue to haunt). The word “homegoing” marks death, but also a return to home. Gyasi pushes the reader to contemplate what shapes Black life and death, as well as what “home” means for the forcibly displaced. (There’s also a whole thing we can get into about Orlando Patterson’s “social death,” but that’s a literal essay waiting to happen.)

Homegoing is raw and emotional. While some may not be thrilled that each chapter are essentially like vignettes, I find that this approach precisely captures what Gyasi wants the reader to experience: a haunting full of unresolved ache.

Content Warnings

More...