Homegoing
2016
- african american historical fiction
- lgbtq historical fiction
- saga
- literary fiction
- historical fiction
- women
- slavery
- african americans
- history
- fiction
The story
Homegoing is the debut historical fiction novel by Ghanaian-American author Yaa Gyasi, published in 2016. Each chapter in the novel follows a different descendant of an Asante woman named Maame, starting with her two daughters, who are half-sisters, separated by circumstance: Effia marries James Collins, the British governor in charge of Cape Coast Castle, while her half-sister Esi is held captive in the dungeons below. Subsequent chapters follow their children and following generations. The novel was selected in 2016 for the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for best first book, and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2017. It received the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for 2017, an American Book Award, and the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature.
What it’s like
Measured, wide-ranging prose that moves in short, deliberate chapters, each one settling into a new room, village, or city with the patience of a family album being turned page by page. The voice is clear and unhurried, carrying sensory detail of red earth, coastal fog, the damp stone of a fort's dungeons, cotton fields in heat, and the crowded noise of Harlem and Mississippi lumber camps, so that each place arrives with its own weather. The tone is sorrowful but steady, more elegy than outrage, with a quiet undercurrent of inheritance and what gets carried forward. Intensity is serious: slavery, captivity, violent punishment, and racial cruelty appear in direct, unsensational detail, with some brief but harrowing moments, and little gore on the page. Its emotional register is grief and endurance rather than thriller tension, and its people's arcs trace estrangement, loss, and slow recognition across generations. Best suited to readers who want a sweeping, patient family saga on a cold evening, and who can sit with difficult history without needing relief.
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