Summarized & Analyzed: "Homegoing"

By Student World

The author very skillfully describes how the descendants of an Asante woman named Maame lived their lives. Each chapter describes a different descendant of Maame. The narrative begins with the description of Maame’s two daughters, Effia and Esi, who are separated by circumstances. The lucky one Effia marries James Collins who happens to be the British governor in charge of Cape Coast Castle. The ill-fated half-sister Esi is captured and she is held captive in the dungeons below the Castle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: Aug 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370714896

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Summarized & Analyzed: Homegoing

Student World

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Summarized & Analyzed: Homegoing

Student World

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Summarized & Analyzed: Homegoing

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Introduction

About Homegoing

Plot Overview

About Major Characters

Complete Summary

Critical Analysis

Note

Introduction

Student World is a group of college lecturers and professors. We understand how high school and college students feel when they are given to read literature, especially classics. They generally get lost in the long and complex sentences, a parade of characters, and shifting narratives, thus making it difficult for them to make head from tail.

Our guide books are written in very simple and clear language, without exaggerating the facts. We do not include our opinions and never become too subjective while analyzing the works of literature.

We try to make our books as easy as possible for students to read them and learn from them so that when they read the original texts of the classics or other works of literature, they are prepared and they know what the work is about.

In this book we have included introduction to the book, plot overview, about major characters, complete summary, and critical analysis.

Although we know that some students do not want to read the original text because they prepare only to pass their exams or tests, yet we insist that they read the original text of Homegoing so that they can understand the subtle aspects of the narrative which can't be presented in this treatise.

All the best

Student World

About Homegoing

Ghanaian-American writer Yaa Gyasi shot into limelight with her very first published novel Homegoing in 2016. It is a historical fiction novel that presents a very complicated picture of the intertwined histories of Ghana and the United States from the 1700s to the present time.

According to the author, having completed her sophomore year at Stanford University, she visited Ghana in the summer of 2009. She visited the Cape Coast castle as well. Her trip to Ghana was sponsored by a known person in the field of research.

Yaa Gyasi was born in Ghana, but her parents moved to the United States when she was just an infant. It was her first trip to Ghana in 2009. One of her friends prompted her to visit the Cape Coast Castle. The upper levels were for the colonists and their local families and the slaves lived in misery in the dungeons below. She was deeply moved to see that place where slaves used to be kept. According to Gyasi, she just found that really interesting to think about how there had been people walking around who had been unaware of what was to become of the people living downstairs. Obviously, she began to think about the difference between the colonists and the slaves who were kept in captivity downstairs.

The narrative is unique owing to the writing style, for each chapter of the novel follows one descendant and it also describes a significant historical event. However, according to the author, her research was wide but shallow.

The author admits that she was inspired by The Door of No Return written by William St. Clair, describing the life in and around the Castle. The first few chapters of the present book are directly inspired by the book mentioned above. She also admits that one of the final chapters of the book that is titled Marjorie is inspired by the author’s own experiences while she was living as a member of an immigrant family in Alabama. So it is obvious that the author’s personal experiences are combined with the research she had conducted to write this book.

She says that her trip to Ghana in 2009 and her visit to the Castle gave her the idea to write the present book. Eventually, the book was published in 2016 and it was very well received. Most critics and the general public liked the book. The book was admired by most notable newspapers and magazines in the United States and the other countries around the world. The book was listed as an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review.

The book received the John Leonard Prize in the same year of its first publication. In the following year, the book won the National Book Critics Circle and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.

The author very skillfully describes how the descendants of an Asante woman named Maame lived their lives. Each chapter describes a different descendant of Maame. The narrative begins with the description of Maame’s two daughters, Effia and Esi, who are separated by circumstances. The lucky one Effia marries James Collins who happens to be the British governor in charge of Cape Coast Castle. The ill-fated half-sister Esi is captured and she is held captive in the dungeons below the Castle.

In the following chapters, we learn about the children of these two sisters and the following generation. The novel has several characters, and it is obvious that keeping track of so many characters and their relations to each other is not an easy task for a normal reader, but the author has presented the characters in such a way that everything becomes very easy and the readers easily follow the storyline.

Plot Overview

As the novel begins, we are told about an Asante woman named Mamme in the 1700s. The story follows Maame and her descendants. This woman has two daughters named Effia and Esi. Their fate separates them and they never meet. Esi is captured and enslaved in a Fante village while the other daughter Effia escapes back to Asanteland.

Effia happens to be Maame’s first daughter. She marries a white man, a British governor, who happens to have been sent to Africa as part of the British slave trade. Esi is Maame’s second daughter. She is enslaved and eventually sold into slavery. She is sent to the United States with the other slaves who had been kept as captives in the dungeons of the Castle.

The six chapters of the book tell us about the descendants of Effia. The chapters are titled Quey, James,