Homegoing takes you to 18th century Ghana, where two sisters Effia and Esi are born and raised in different villages, never meeting each other.

Effia marries a British man to live a comfortable life in the Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to her, Esi, who has been captured and sold into slavery, is imprisoned in the dungeons just below the same castle, from where she is shipped to America with thousands of others. And thus follows a story of generations of descendants of these two sisters. Effia’s descendants, battle through unrest resulting from the war between Fantes, Ansantees, and the British. While Esi’s descendants live through slavery, civil war, and everything in-between and afterward in America. There lives separate, yet connected. Different, yet the same.

How did it make me feel?

I knew Homegoing was good, from what I’d heard and read, but I don’t think I imagined it to be this good. As soon as I picked it up, I knew I was going to remember this story for a long time.
It’s amazing how we read so many stories under the label of Fiction, but deep down we know that so many people have lived these stories, or worse. And to realize that..is terrifying!

Yes, we know of the war. We know who won, who lost, we know what started, what ended, and when. But we know NOTHING of the suffering, of the pain, of the loss. And thus, it is so so important, especially now more than ever, for such stories to come out. And the next time someone spits out, “why just the black lives? Every life matters!” in front of me, I’ll throw this book at their face and say, “Learn! LEARN about what you think you know before you act like a know-it-all!”

Thank you Yaa Gyasi for this! How is this your debut novel??!! :O

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Have you read Homegoing? Or are you planning to read it soon? I, obviously, highly recommend it!