Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

245 reviews

cecilialau_'s review against another edition

4.5

This book was an absolute epic. The ambition and talent that went into this - and a debut as well!
It was gut-wrenching and tragic and criminally cruel, and heart-achingly stunning/heavy all at the same time.
Full of individual experiences - all including prejudice, discrimination and injustice - of about 250 years and seven generations. The subtlety of our world’s history and relationship with racism lives on to this day, and we cannot deny that or deny the history lesson that this book provides so vividly and thoroughly.

Favourite stories/chapters out of the 14 would have to be Ness, Kojo and H.
I need this to be required reading. But I also acknowledge the very heavy subject of colonialism and white superiority complexes. It is confronting but that’s how reality works… 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Abandonment, Addiction, Body horror, Confinement, Death, Excrement, War, Homophobia, Mental illness, Murder, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Slavery, Violence, Body shaming, Bullying, Child death, Colonisation, Drug use, Torture, Vomit, Rape, Sexual harassment, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Hate crime, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Racism, and Religious bigotry

rhi_'s review against another edition

challenging dark emotional 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Racism, Violence, Confinement, and Slavery

Moderate: Addiction, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Toxic relationship, Sexism, Grief, Hate crime, Misogyny, Child abuse, and Police brutality

Minor: Pregnancy, Police brutality, Sexual assault, Gun violence, Sexual harassment, Classism, Terminal illness, and Rape

chelle22's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Genocide, Infidelity, Cursing, Fire/Fire injury, Trafficking, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Classism, Racism, Infertility, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Sexism, Sexual assault, Slavery, Addiction, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Violence, War, Suicide, Torture, Homophobia, Abandonment, Adult/minor relationship, Cultural appropriation, Murder, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Hate crime, Panic attacks/disorders, Blood, Colonisation, Alcohol, Child death, Death, Police brutality, and Sexual content

eslx32's review against another edition

dark emotional 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Violence and Rape

shlymiller's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-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? No

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism and Slavery

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, War, and Violence

Minor: Pregnancy and Suicide

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Colonisation, Sexual violence, Pregnancy, Murder, Racism, Sexual harassment, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Kidnapping, Slavery, Violence, Sexual assault, and Sexism

Moderate: Drug use, Confinement, Child abuse, and Addiction

Minor: Infidelity

murve's review against another edition

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery, Trafficking, Racism, and Violence

ran_sophia's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

It is an excellently written and pointed book with a very strong story.  Given the subject matter of the story, it was a difficult and challenging read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Panic attacks/disorders, Violence, Slavery, and Rape

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Bullying, and Death

Minor: War

kimberlynpeterson50's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• 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

This sweeping novel begins during the late 1700s slave trade in Ghana to present day. The two women whose stories we follow never meet, their journeys acting as sliding doors to different lives - one enslaved, one marrying a slaver. Thank goodness for the family tree, which I referenced frequently as I read. Gyasi details generation after generation of these women’s descendants, never directly looping back to share what eventually happened, but revealing outcomes through their children. This is a powerful demonstration of generational trauma, through both plot and character. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Kidnapping, Racism, Slavery, Violence, Abandonment, Death, Drug abuse, and Colonisation

melnao1's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional inspiring sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• 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

I recently read Transcendent Kingdon by Yaa Gyasi and knew immediately that I had to get into some of her other work. This book was even better than her second which is insane for a debut. In this novel she explores the effects of slavery and institutionalized racism for both the enslaved and for some of the perpetuators through stories that connected via a common descendant. Yaa Gyasi did an amazing job of writing about characters in vastly different time periods and lives while depicting Ghanian culture and customs of the Ashante tribe in accurate light for a historical fiction novel. I loved how the common thread holding all these stories together were family stories and the beauty in how they pieced into each other, even when the subject matter was heartbreaking. This book was magical for all the reasons you don't think stories coming out of such misery would be. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Trafficking, Slavery, Torture, and Violence