While racial inequality is explored throughout Homegoing, Gyasi also reveals how racism intersects with gender. Although some of the characters are “freed,” they are still enslaved to institutional racism as a result of colonization and slavery. Like Ness, Kojo, and H, many of the characters inherit fear and trauma from the moment they are born and have a lack a capacity for memory as their family lineages disappear. So, in turn, Kojo becomes ghosted and his son never knows who his own father is. Furthermore, his wife disappears, pregnant with his unnamed son, H, after being kidnapped by a white male. Kojo never knows who his mother and father are his bloodline is thus ghosted- a theme that haunts many of the characters in the novel. The America that Kojo lives in is very different than the free world the white Americans thrive in.

Tell a lie long enough and it will turn to truth” (112). Gyasi writes, “Half the ex-slaves in Baltimore had the name. Ironically, Kojo’s free papers give him the last name, Freeman. Ma Aku, a former Asante slave, then American slave, then, finally free, saves Kojo by taking him and raising him as one of her own. Kojo, for example, is taken from his mother, Ness (descendent of Esi), as a baby, while she attempts to escape the brutality of a slave plantation. The theme of what true freedom means as an American is prominent as characters navigate their traumatic pasts and inherited fear into the present day. Throughout Homegoing Gyasi questions who is really free in America. Each chapter alternates in narration from the perspectives of descendants of Effia and Esi as the stories move through the passage of time from the 18th Century to the present day. Effia marries a British slave trader and leads a life of comfort in the Cape Coast Castle (an old British slave fort where enslaved Africans were held in an underground dungeon) while Esi is captured in a raid on her village, imprisoned in the same castle, and sold into slavery in America. Homegoing is composed of many linked short stories that follow the lineage of two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, born in different villages in Ghana during the 18th century. I will say, it took me longer than normal to finish this book though, because of the content on slave experience, and the fact that it spans 200 years- I took my time with it and am so glad I did. After putting this book down, I instantly thought about all of the ways I could incorporate the novel or even excerpts of it into a college classroom. I can’t fully express how much I enjoyed Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.

Homegoing yaa gyasi sparknotes