Separated sisters “are like a woman and her reflection, doomed to stay on opposite sides of a pond”

Spanning 300 years, 2 continents, 7 generations, and 14 different perspectives, Homegoing is an astonishing debut novel by a 26-year-old Ghanaian-American.

In 1700s Ghana, two half-sisters are born. Effia the Beautiful is a well-born Fante whose mother, Maame, had vanished during a fire. Effia dreams of marrying the chief, but marries (is sold?) to a British trader instead.

[Her father knew] that the premonition of the dissolution and destruction of the family lineage, the premonition that he had had the night of the fire, would begin here, with his daughter and the white man.

Marriage, that is, of a sort.

The only other Fantes she saw regularly were the spouses of the other traders.

She’d heard the Englishmen call them ‘wenches’, not wives. ‘Wife’ was a word reserved for the white women across the Atlantic. ‘Wench’ was something else entirely, a word the soldiers used to keep their hands clean so that they would not get in trouble with their god, a being who himself was made up of three but who allowed men to marry only one.

Esi is the other child of Effia’s mother, who had survived the fire to become an Asante chief’s wife. Captured in a raid by the Fantes, Esi is sold to the slavers. Unbeknownst to both girls, Esi is incarcerated in the infamous slave-holding dungeon, while Effia lives in comfort above.

“My husband comes up from the dungeons stinking like a dying animal”, [another ‘wench’] said softly.

Their mother had given each child a polished black stone, but right away the heartbreaking disruption of family history becomes clear: while Effia’s stone is set in gold and passed on through generations, Esi’s is lost in a slave prison before she is shipped off to America.

Gyasi is clear-eyed about the participation of Africans in the slave trade.

After each [raid and ] capture the prisoners would be put on display in the center of the village square. Anyone could walk by and stare at them, mostly young, virile warriors, though sometimes women and their children. Some of these prisoners would be taken by the villagers as slaves, house boys and house girls, cooks and cleaners, but soon there would be too many to keep and the overflow would have to be dealt with.

The ‘overflow’ are sold to the British as slaves, transported to the west and to America.

Each chapter tells the story from one perspective, alternating between Effia and Esi’s descendants, and moving forward by a generation. Each chapter is set in the present of that character, and ends on an ambiguous, thoughtful note. The fate of each character becomes clear only two chapters on, from their child’s memories or thoughts.

The perpetual uncertainty and loss of family among the African slaves is starkly drawn, and without any overt statement, underscores the breaks in family history, the loss of family lore and knowledge of their ancestors.

Ness is Esi’s child, ‘torn from her mothers arms’ and sold to be a field hand. She has heard stories of ‘The Big Boat where they were stacked 10 high, and when a man died his weight would press the pile down like cooks pressing garlic’. But she knows nothing of her mothers Ghanaian past or family. Ness ends up as a field hand in Alabama.

the sun scorched cotton so hot it almost burned the palms of your hands to touch it. Holding those small white puffs almost felt like holding fire, but God forbid you let one drop.

A generation later in Maryland, Ness’ son Jo (Kojo) thinks of Aku, the woman who escaped with him, as his mother. ‘He knew his mother and father as stories, nothing more.‘ In 1850, Jo is living in Baltimore with a wife and family when the Fugitive Slave Act comes into effect: Jo’s wife Anna is kidnapped by bounty hunters, and even her picture is shredded by a vile white policeman, so that the family has no physical memories of her existence.

The novel ends in the present day with Marjorie, born in Ghana and grown up in Alabama where her father is a professor of English (much like Gyaasi herself). At Stanford she meets Marcus, Esi’s descendant, son of a drug-addicted father.

300 years is a lot of history for a novel, and the latter chapters move rather briskly through the prisons where black men are disproportionately sent, the civil rights movement, drugs and inner-city ghettos. Gyaasi makes a solid attempt to make each character distinct, but there are simply so many of them that the reader can lose track. The earlier generations who are accorded longer chapters are more memorable, so it is tempting to wonder if the novel would have been even more impressive if it had skipped a few generations.

Back in Ghana, Effia’s descendants have their own historical events. These are less dramatic than the events in America, but the contrast is clear: the changes in the American family happen due to massive historical events completely outside their own control, usually with little agency by the characters themselves.

Gyaasi’s writing is precise and clear, without any verbal gymnastics or captivating turns of phrase. That clarity makes the story seem factual and non-judgemental, but that calm, almost detached tone also lays out the devastating effects of slavery that linger to the present generation.

While there is plenty of brutality described (“her scarred skin was like another body in and of itself”, “he gave Esi five lashes for each minute of Ness’s silence”), I noted that there are no descriptions of rape. This novel avoids the sometimes voyeuristic focus on women’s molestation that is often part of stories about slavery.

At the end of the novel (no spoilers), Marjorie and Marcus travel together to Ghana, where there is a remarkable scene involving fire and water, with a sense of inching towards positive closure.