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A review by artemisg
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
emotional
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
Brutally beautiful. How Gyasi managed to make every character and their voice distinct in 20ish pages is a miracle to me. We spend so little time with everyone, but their stories feel told; they feel real and whole. That is an achievement.
This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others.
This feels like an essential novel. Through reading this, I came to understand things I didn’t necessarily enjoy. In this novel, we follow two different familial lines from Ghana. One ancestral line stems from a women who was married off to an English slave trader, and one from a woman who was captured and traded as a slave. The stories heartbreakingly mirror one another in some ways and are heartwrenchingly different in others.
If we go to the white man for school, we will learn the way the white man wants us to learn. We will come back and build the country the white man wants us to build. One that continues to serve them. We will never be free.
So much was stolen from the people in this book, and so much was stolen from enslaved people and indigenous communities in the slave trade. This book examines the prison complex and, segregation and drug abuse. It is also beautifully written, and emotional and important and everything to me.
This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others.
This feels like an essential novel. Through reading this, I came to understand things I didn’t necessarily enjoy. In this novel, we follow two different familial lines from Ghana. One ancestral line stems from a women who was married off to an English slave trader, and one from a woman who was captured and traded as a slave. The stories heartbreakingly mirror one another in some ways and are heartwrenchingly different in others.
If we go to the white man for school, we will learn the way the white man wants us to learn. We will come back and build the country the white man wants us to build. One that continues to serve them. We will never be free.
So much was stolen from the people in this book, and so much was stolen from enslaved people and indigenous communities in the slave trade. This book examines the prison complex and, segregation and drug abuse. It is also beautifully written, and emotional and important and everything to me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Slavery, Racism, and Physical abuse