Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is a sweeping saga of a family ripped apart by slavery, colonialism, and geography.  Two half-sisters never meet and we follow each branch of their separate trees, from Africa to the United States and back again, until those branches once again meet. 

The structure of the book is unique in that each chapter is told from a different POV and every two chapters we switch generations entirely.  This works best early on, when I think Gyasi really spent time inside character's heads, really dealing with the tension between slavers and sellers in Africa among tribes.  Once we get past the Civil War, the characters become less fleshed out and it feels more like a text book chapter of what life was like in a particular place and time.  It's not bad, but that switch towards the end of the books makes it seem like Gyasi doesn't really have much time for the plight of modern-day black Americans of African descent.

Regardless of that slight nitpick, I thought this book was marvelous. It was ambitious and I thought that I was, as a reader, rewarded by Gyasi's ambition.  If I ever meet someone who rolls his or her eyes at the idea that black people are still being oppressed in the United States, I'm going to hand them this book. Sure, slavery has been illegal for over a hundred years, but that doesn't mean the ramifications of slavery aren't felt every day in the family stories, the lack of ties to the community, the historical discrimination that leads to high drug use and incarceration rates, and the inability to just "go back" to a place that no longer understands you.

It was sad and I felt a knot in my stomach as I was reading it.  Even though I knew that these were fictional lives, I also know that this "story" isn't entirely fiction.  As we're watching migrant children be treated despicably in our own county, in 2019, this book is a not so gentle reminder that we are responsible for making sure this historical fiction doesn't parallel our present reality.