December 2018 Book, Homegoing
A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power, Homegoing traces three hundred years in Ghana. Along the way, the lives of Gyasi's characters are shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, Esi is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade. She is shipped off to America where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America, where they experience the plantations of the South, the Civil War, the Great Migration, coal