Having reading reviews of how harrowing Gyasi’s Homegoing was, I have still not summoned the courage to read it yet, but her second novel has turned out very readable.
Our protagonist is Gifty, a second generation Ghanaian immigrant in the US. Her mother wins a green card lottery and moves to Alabama with her son, Nana, older than Gifty by 5 years. Gifty is not yet born at this stage. Gifty’s father joins his wife and son in Alabama, but he is not happy there. Gifty’s mother works 12 hour shifts as a home health worker looking after an abusive, racist white man, while her husband finds jobs as janitor in schools. After several years, Gifty’s father returns to Ghana on the pretext of a visit to his brother, but never comes back. Although he is in touch, he has left his family in America and never goes back to them.
“There used to be four of us, then three, then two”
p20
From the start, we are told Nana dies at fifteen, so it is just Gifty and her mother left. The present day part of the narrative finds Gifty at 28, a neuroscience graduate researcher in Stanford, and her 68 year old depressed mother coming to stay with her, silent and unresponsive.
Gifty’s relationship with her mother is at the heart of this novel. Unlike many immigrant parents, Gifty’s mother does not seem to much care about her daughter’s achievements or career, nor take any particular pride in them, or regard them as social capital. Gifty goes to Harvard, and when she tells her mother she wants to make a career in science,
she simply shrugged. “Okay, fine.”
p38
The novel does contain mentions of the casual racism experienced by Ghanaians, even in the church, but it is not a book about migrant struggles. There are some wonderful mentions of the Ghanaian Association and hosting parties and so on, which gives us just a glimpse into that community, but the book is not necessarily about finding a mixed-cultural identity either. It is a book about how Gifty makes peace with herself and finds herself, coming out of a difficult childhood, and contending with losses and tragedies.
Gifty’s mother did not attempt to shield her children nor offer any illusions for fun. Gifty recalls as a child slipping tooth after tooth under her pillow and always waking to still find the tooth under her pillow.
She was never the kind of parent who lied to make her children feel better.
p26-27
It goes beyond being honest with the children; Gifty identifies a kind of brutality to it:
“I was already my mother’s daughter then, callous.”
p38
She also recounts how her mother had ignored her even knowing it was causing her pain. But she is remarkably forgiving of her mother, understanding of her mother’s mental illness even while being continuously wounded by/in the relationship with her mother.
There is no doubt that Gifty’s mother was not an easy person to deal with, and moreover, one severely mentally ill. Gifty’s mother is extremely religious, and resistant to many what she would deem American ways. Although clearly clinically depressed, she declares she does not believe in mental illness.
After my brother died, she refused to name her illness depression. “Americans get depressed on TV, and they cry,” she said. My mother rarely cried.
p32
However, it is clear her mother is a strong woman, trying to bring up two children on her own in the USA and not returning to Ghana, which she could so easily have done, after her husband left. She is also a woman who is struggling with American culture, viewing and judging it through the lenses of her own Ghanaian culture:
Four weeks into my freshman year, she ended a phonecall with “I love you,” spoken in the reluctant mumble she reserved for English. I laughed so hard I started crying. An “I love you” from the woman who once called the phrase aburofo nkwaseasem, white people’s foolishness.
p38
After Gifty’s brother dies, her mother sends her back to Ghana for a summer, supposedly as her mother’s emissary to seek healing for her mother. Gifty does not enjoy her summer with her aunt and relatives, does not like Ghana, and cannot wait to get back to the US. It is not from Ghana that Gifty draws her identity. But there are some lovely passages which indicate a nuanced set of identities even for Ghanaians:
I also started paying more attention to my mother. When she spoke Fante on the phone with her friends, she became like a girl again, giggling and gossiping. When she spoke Twi to me, she was her mother-self, stern and scary, warm. In English, she was meek.
p116
As a child, Gifty tries to be immensely pious, to please her mother. But when that doesn’t work, she loses faith – although her early Christian indoctrination never quite leaves her and she continues to quote the Bible unthinkingly, chapter and verse. Gifty regards science as a consolation and replacement for her lost faith. She elects her discipline or neuroscience hoping it will give her answers as to why her brother died from an overdose. She works with mice to discover how the brain works where rewards are concerned, why some brains will keep seeking the reward even though the risks are too high, and whether treatment can change that. By the time she is a graduate student, she has long left behind her the religious girl she used to be, and instead is accustomed to one night stands with dates she never sees again, not seeming to realise she needs to esteem herself better than this. Clearly, her childhood and conflicted upbringing continue to spill over into her adult interactions, where she is extremely wary, slow to trust, and lacking in ability to express warmth.
It is a mark of the strength of writing that despite a not particularly endearing protagonist or cast of characters, the narrative is strong and holds the reader’s interest with ease. While our protagonist lacks warmth, the writing is characterised by it. I may find myself daring to pick up Homegoing afterall!
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