Do you ever wonder about
your ancestors? Have you researched your
genealogy? I think genealogy is
fascinating and have dabbled with it.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
was our May book club pick for the Rogue Book Club. I have been wanting to read this book for a
long time and was glad to finally get to read it.
In the 18th
century, two half sisters are born in Ghana and go on to live very different
lives. Effia marries an Englishman and
lives in the Cape Coast Castle. Her husband
has a wife back in England and is involved in the slave trade. Esri is captured in the basement of the
Castle and is shipped to the United States as a slave. The novel traces the lives of the descendants
of the two sisters as they live their lives through turbulent times in Ghana and
the United States.
I’ll admit when the book
first switched from the sisters to their descendants, I had a hard time trying
to figure out what was going on. Each
chapter tells the story of a new descendant, although some characters are in
the stories of their descendants as well.
I got used to the format and I also really liked the family try at the
start of the book. I didn’t really feel
the true genius of the novel until I got to the end of the novel. It perfectly ties up the entire story.
It reminded me of Roots,
but I liked that it showed how the families differed between who stayed behind
in Africa and who went to the United States.
I liked the unique format and the journey.
Book Source: Purchased
from Barnes and Nobles. Thank-you!
Sounds complicated but good
ReplyDeleteI have done a lot of genealogy researching my own ancestors; it's very fascinating to see where they came from and what they did and why they came to America. This is one of those books I've been meaning to read for a long time. The journey of these two sisters and their descendants does sound like an interesting one.
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