With her first novel, Yaa Gyasi crafts a captivating and potent narrative. Homegoing alternates between the parallel lineages of Ghanaian half-sisters Effia and Esi. Born in an 18th-century Fante village, Effia never knows her mother, a slave to the girl's father, who flees to the nearby Asante village, where she later gives birth to Esi. As the girls grow up, Effia is given in marriage to a British slave trader; Esi, captured and raped by slavers, bears children destined for continued abuse--bought, sold and shipped to the New World.
Gyasi portrays the effects of personal and political decisions unto the seventh generation as years pass and family ties bind the sisters' offspring. Their hopes, regrets and secrets are handed down as each of her characters faces quandaries of submission and resistance to social systems of oppression. Their narratives are rich with poignant details about the lingering colonial influence of Christian missionaries in Ghana or the infuriating Jim Crow laws in the U.S.
Rarely does a grand, sweeping epic plumb interior lives so thoroughly. Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing is a marvel. It reminds readers that, every step of the way, the African diaspora has been shaped by individuals at their best and at their worst, vulnerable human beings craving the safety of a place to call home. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness