Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Homegoing: Open Reading Response
There is so much to write about in Homegoing that I'd like to leave it up to you what you want to focus on in your response. The parameters are that you need to choose a focused idea and illustrate it with particular passages from the text, but beyond that, it's up to you. I'd love to hear about what interests you most about the novel.
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“This is what they wanted. The baby had messed itself, and Afua, its mother, had no milk. She was naked… No food for the mother meant no food for the baby” (p.28). How can humans treat humans so poorly? We have the same means of survival. Why does this “superior race” believe they have the right to treat others like they are nothing. How could they leave little babies who haven’t caused anyone harm to die? Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi creates many Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives comfortably in the rooms of Cape Coast Castle. On the other hand, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery.
ReplyDeleteThis book has a lot of going on throughout the entirety of it. I want to focus on the beginning of the novel because of how vital it is to know where everything originated from and how that has shaped future history. We have discussed in class how important to know the history of cultures. Homegoing is a unique collection of stories that gives an entire picture of what it was like in Ghana throughout many periods of history. I have never experienced a book such as this where it covers so much.
The chapter labeled “Esi”, goes into detail about Esi and her story about being taken as a slave and held in the Cape Coast Castle dungeon. They threw women and children and men into small rooms all compacted together. They were treated like animals if not worse. “Esi had been in the women’s dungeon of the Cape Coast Castle for two weeks. She spent her fifteenth birthday there… A soldier came into the dungeon and began to speak. He had to hold his nose to keep from vomiting” (pg. 29). It was clear that basic human rights were stripped away from these human beings.
Slaves, as human beings, have been stripped of their dignity and their human rights. Being stripped of rights, being harassed, sexually and physically, and having a price put on their lives, is a violation. Since the beginning of time people have been taken in as slaves. When will it stop? Will it ever stop? This book makes me think about those questions. Why has the idea of treating certain people this way become normalized. In different time periods the treatment of humans became a part of everyday life. People watched as others suffered. I believe Homegoing gives us a source where we can see history repeating itself. When will we fully learn as a nation? I think this book puts everything into perspective of how bad it was and how it continues to be bad. Though there has been progression, there is so much to do to improve the nations when it comes to the treatment of people.
Homegoing is a novel like no other. Not just in the way that every novel is like no other, but in a way that truly stands out from other novels. The structure of Homegoing is fully unique; while there are other novels in which the chapters change which character’s perspective is being told between each chapter—such as When the Emperor Was Divine—I have never heard of another book in which each chapter is told from the perspective of alternating generational lines, following the same family along the diverging branches of its tree until the branches come back together and intertwine in the end.
ReplyDeleteI think that the reason this structure is so effective for this particular story is because through it we are able to see the effects of the slave trade on both sides of the Atlantic, in Africa and America. We see its effects on the descendants of two women, sisters who never knew each other but who received opposite treatments; while one was held in the dungeons of the Cape Coast Castle to be sold as a slave, the other was married to the governor of the region, living in at least relative comfort and without fear. We then see, through Effia’s genealogical line, how the slave trade affected Ghana and the people who lived there. We see Quey, who helped both the white and black populations in different ways. We see his son, James, who just wanted to be able to make his own choices and became Unlucky because of them. His daughter Abena was equally unlucky as she tried to make a life for herself, but ultimately failed. Her daughter Akua tried to live her own life, until finally her family’s past overcame her. Her son Yaw tried to escape his family and the horrors that haunted them. His daughter Marjorie wanted to find her roots. Through Esi’s familial line, we see Ness, who did what she had to so that her son could survive and be free. We see Kojo, who was free, to an extent, and worked hard so that his family could stay that way. Despite his efforts, we see H who is taken from his father and siblings and later imprisoned for something he did not do. His daughter, Willie, tries to escape her family’s fate in Pratt City and runs to New York, where she meets her own fate. Her son Carson, Sonny, finds his own prison in drug addiction, while his son Marcus becomes determined to make something of himself as far from Harlem as he can get.
Through these many stories, we see the way both family lines were damaged by the slave trade. We see wars started in Africa over slaving and slavers, as well as the horrible lives that the slaves they stole were subjected to in America. Homegoing uses its unique structure to give its readers a wider picture of this conflict than is often expressed, leaving the reader with a greater impact from and understanding of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Comparison is a tool that is used often in Homegoing. In the second chapter of the book we meet Esie. She is kept in the dungeon at the Cape Coast Castle as a slave. Along with hundreds of other women, she is kept in a dark cell with absolutely no light. Her daughter Ness is sold to be a plantation worker in America. Her working conditions are brutal. The rule held over are intense and over exaggerated. Ness and Esie’s stories are echoed in the story of H.
ReplyDeleteH is the great-grandson of Esie, all though they’ve never met each other. He was a slave in America before the civil war. After liberation, he is charged unreasonably for looking at a white woman. H is sent to the mines to do hard labor during his sentence. The darkness and blackness of the mines allude to earlier stories of Esie in the dungeon. His working conditions, the threat of beatings, and lack of rest are comparable to Ness’s conditions.
Yaa Gyasi shows what is meant by “generational oppression.” Slavery did not affect two or three generations and then die out with the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement. It is far lasting and reaching. I think a lot of times when I was younger, I would think about the civil rights movement as this amazing time period of people fighting for justice, and after that racial issues had been satisfied and the KKK had been dissolved. I was shocked in middle school to learn that the Klan was still active and hurting people, but I still didn’t understand generational issues. This book helped me to understand the oppression that can follow people through generations and affect not only them and their children, but also their great-great-grandchildren.
Another thing the book helped me to understand was a general distrust of white people. It seemed crazy to me, prior to reading Homegoing, that black people today would still distrust white people for something that happened so long ago, only it wasn’t that long ago. In Effie and Esie’s stories, it would be very easy to distrust white people because of what they had done to them. In their children’s stories it’s also easy to see why there would be distrust. Ness’s slavery and hardship was dealt at the hand of white people. And we see with H, even after the civil war, the white people he communed with found a reason to lock him up and put him back to labor. Given all these experiences generational distrust is expected. The book was able to help me identify the emotion that people must feel even though I can’t understand it.
Throughout the entire novel, we see history play out through different perspectives and different stories of a common genealogy. Yea Gyasi used a unique way to tell a story not only in different perspectives, but alternating between the two distinctly different lives in the time period of the slave trade. Though the family was separated, playing out significantly different lives, there seems to always be a connection between all the characters that ties them back to a common ancestor. The role of the black stone has been mentioned in bits and pieces while the reader is reading, connecting all the different stories into one. It was a common gift that Maame gave to both Esi and Effia, showing that even apart, history still ties the family together.
ReplyDeleteBaaba was the one who handed Effia the black stone which was described to be a “pendant that shimmered as though it had been coated in gold dust”. Effia was then told by Baaba to bring it wherever she went as a signification of her taking a piece of her mother no matter where she goes. Throughout the chapter about Effia, we see how the black stone brought her comfort in the midst of chaos. When James took the black stone pendant and attached a string on it so that Effia could wear it around her neck, the stone was a physical object, and yet it was able to bring her a sense of peace and comfort.
Switching gears to the other end of the family, Maame handed Esi “a black stone, glimmering with gold”. When it was handed to Esi, it was the first time Maama ever mentioned Esi’s sister; the first mentioning of a connection that ties Effia and Esi together. Through the rough patches that Esi had to go through, struggling to survive in the dungeon floors, the black stone brought coolness and helped sooth her both physically and mentally.
As the black stone continues to be passed down through the generation, it became a stone that grew hot. It signified the evilness in their heritage because of the choices that they made to bring about so much pain and suffering by letting the trade business for slaves to continue for such a long period of time. Not only that, it brings about the story of Effia’s childhood in Badu’s village. This tied the descendants of Effia into understanding where they really belonged, and where they really came from. This linked her past together with the past of Esi’s. Whenever the black stone resurfaced, it brings about memories them to start a conversation and pass down the history of who their ancestors are, and the different experience they went through. It was an important symbol of home that brings generations of separation back into one.
ReplyDeleteI think it is very interesting that each chapter of the novel is narrated from the perspective of a descendant of either Effia or Esi, one representative for each generation, and the two bloodlines alternate up to the present day. I want to focus on the two different upbringings of Effia and Esi, and how each of their lives were flip flopped.
In Yaa Gyasi’s, novel Homegoing, there is contrast in how the sisters were raised, and how they live now. It is so hard to imagine that while one sister is living lavishly, the other is fighting for survival in a dungeon underneath Effia’s very footsteps. But it wasn’t always like that. The lives of both sisters are so different and it’s almost like they traded places in a way. Esi was living well off and when captured, was put in a harsh living environment. And Effia was beaten all her life by her mother leaving her covered with scars, and now she lives in a castle.
The British slave trade was horrid, I never had a very good understanding of it until reading the first few chapters of the novel. While Effia enjoys the upper floors of the governor’s mansion, her half sister Esi finds herself trapped below in a dungeon among slaves awaiting transport to the New World. Esi is raped by a soldier in the dungeon and has Ness. Effia gets married and has Quey. One of the sisters had a choice to become pregnant, while the other did not. Effia was treated properly by the man she was arranged to marry with, and Esi was raped before she ever had a husband. When Effia gives birth to a son, his descendants will remain in Ghana to face war and colonization, and Esi's descendants will labor as slaves in America.
The first few chapters that cover Effia and Esi are full of hopeful despair. It makes readers wonder if Esi will get out of the slave trade, which she does. And if the sisters will ever unite. All that we know so far is that their lives are completely different from what they used to be.
The novel “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi, was a very interesting and different way of portraying accounts of so many different relatives throughout history. The novel starts off with showing us the two half sisters Effia and Esi in the first and second chapters. Yaa Gyasi shows the reader that even though not everyone may know it, people are connected. The novel starts the family tree with Effia and Esi and their life stories. Effia, was to be married to a white man while Esi was trapped in the dungeon beneath the house in which Effia was living. Effia married the white man and had a son named Quey. Esi on the other hand was raped in the dungeon by a white officer before she was sent to America for slavery. She had a daughter named Ness.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the novel, the reader comes to a common theme. That theme is that when something happens on one side of the family tree, something similar happens on the other side. For example, H (a descendant of Esi) and Abena(a descendant of Effia) were on opposite sides of the world and both of them were different from everyone around them. In Abena’s culture it was weird not to marry at a young age and she did not do that. In H’s case, he was an abnormally large human being who was a kind and gentle person. That helps show that even though people are across the world from each other, that they can still be connected in some way.
Although the situations were very different for Akua and Willie, they were both still connected by the struggles that they faced. In Akua’s story, the reader can see that not only does she struggle against the Missionaries but also against the people of different cultures. “In the missionary school they called white people Teacher or Reverend or Miss. When Abena died, Akua had been left to be raised by the Missionary. He was the only one who would take her.” (Homegoing IBook, 393) This passage allows the reader to see that not only was she not able to choose her own path but she was not able to escape from the people that she was being forced to live with. She was surrounded by different customs and many different things that she was not allowed to do because of her skin color and that translates into a lot of Willie’s story as well. In Willie’s story, she wanted to move up north into Harlem, New York. When she got there, she was not able to find a steady job, or able to find a steady place to live. “Too dark, he repeated. Jazzing’s only for the light girls.” (Homegoing IBook, 459) This quote allows the reader to see the important generational problem between the two places. Although Willie had it much worse on most accounts than Akua, they still had the segregation that affected their normal lives.
In conclusion, I believe that not only was this book one of the best books I have ever read, but it was also one of the most influential and emotional books. Throughout the whole book, the reader is face to face with the struggles that are being faced on both sides of the family tree. Yaa Gyasi takes the reader through the Ghana villages and into the deep south of America. While the connections between the generations continued to fall down the line of relatives, the reader could start to notice a connection. Although they are on different continents and have no real communication with each other, the world around them is falling into the same traps and creating a hard situation for people like them. Not only is it tough to read the struggles of these people, but it is also interesting to follow the family tree down the generations and see how not only the people, but the world changed with its views.
One of the things that I find most compelling about this novel is how it leads us in a very personal way through a family line of histories and experiences. Not only does it guide the reader through an education about the experiences of those who went through these huge worldwide tragedies, but it also humanizes them and makes them empathetic and relatable. One of the way this novel does this most successfully is through the element of love in relationships; I found myself identifying and empathizing with the characters through their feelings for one another, and their response to losing loved ones and feeling loss. One specific example that I found especially touching that shows both sides of these powerful emotions was when Willie was being held by Robert when she lost her father and mother. There is the scene where Robert comforts Willie during her grief; "She was inconsolable those first few days. She didn't want to look at Carson, didn't want to hold him. Robert would take her up in his arms at night, kissing her never-ending tears while the baby slept. "I love you, Willie," he'd whisper, and somehow that love hurt too, made her cry even harder, because she didn't want to believe that anything good could still be in the world where her parents had left it." (311). The way this novel touches on human emotions in the deepest way through the character's losses and struggles I think is what makes it so moving and compelling, and makes it feel as if we are the ones going through the journey with them, along with having a bird's eye view of the family tree and each individual's story.
ReplyDeleteThe author touches on broken relationships as well, and the duality of being in love with someone but being conflicted about it. Effia and James' relationship reflects this; though throughout their relationship the novel hints that they had mutual feelings for one another, they had flaws in their connection to one another, which is shown in the downfalls of their relationship; "James had received another letter from his wife the day after he'd found the root underneath their bed. They had not slept together since." (37).
I found Esi's story particularly moving, and the way her emotions through her experiences and those around her are described helped me become that much more empathetic towards them and her. The way their suffering is described; "there was sweat dripping off the ledge of her nose and her eyes were brimming with tears. Even the bucket on her head seemed to be crying, condensation working its way down the outside of it." (57) is very descriptive and poetic, and makes me feel and understand to an extent what they're going through. I felt slightly detached from Kojo's story until he lost his wife, but when he started to experience that horrible loss, suddenly his story became much more compelling and moving. Abena's rejection from Ohene Nyarko was very moving when it showed how it affected her and put in her immense pain, and forced her to move on.
Through the exposure of these flaws both in relationships and in character, I find the novel much more relatable and honest, and it becomes much more "real" to me. I cannot personally relate to being stuck in a mud cell like Esi, and I cannot understand being so poor that a mud cave is all I can afford, and living off of and depending on farm product for survival, but I can identify with these broken emotions, losses, and relationships, and I think it is through that where I find this powerful connection between the characters and myself as the reader. Not all books based off of these hard times and poverty hold these elements, and if they do, not many manage to portray them as real and as powerfully as this novel does.
When reading Yaa Gyasi’s book Homegoing, it reminded me of the stories in the Old Testament. The story wrestled with the tensions of lament, forgiveness and redemption. Each character revealed a perspective or a piece of the puzzle in a larger story. I think that this is possibly due to the fact that both the Homegoing and the Old Testament start at the origins, the genesis of a group of people. Throughout the Holocaust and WWII unit, specifically when reading Maus and now as we enter African and African American literature, there has been an emphasis on the theme of generational trauma. This was very evident in Homegoing due to the structure of the book. Each chapter represented a different generation and different location, which gave me a feeling as if I were reading a story that was circular and continuous.
ReplyDeleteI thought that Gyasi highlighted the theme of generational trauma specifically through the ancestorial stone and scars. The stone represents a concrete symbol of the legacy of Esi and Effia. Despite both sisters being separated, the stone links the family's lineage together. Towards the end of the story, Marjorie gives the ancestral stone to Marcus, “She lifted the stone necklace from her neck, and placed it around Marcus’s. “Welcome Home” (300). This reminded me of God’s covenant leading the Israelites to the Promise Land in the Old Testament. The stone symbolized the remembrance, healing, and redemption of the family line. However, even with redemption and healing, there still is a weight from the suffering and pain that his ancestors endured. This was even seen in Maus when Art was visiting the counselor and was carrying the memories of his Father's trauma from the Holocaust. The narrator in Homegoing states in regards to Marcus, “He touched it, surprised by its weight” (300). By going on a journey of pain and suffering from Marcu’s ancestors, using the stone as a symbol of that suffering, provided me a deeper understanding of the depth of generational trauma.
In addition, I thought it was interesting to see the re-occurring presence of scars through the family line. Starting with Effia, “For each scar on Effia’s body, there was a companion scar on Baaba’s but that didn’t stop mother from beating daughter, father from beating mother” (5). In the beginning of the book, I noticed that there was a significant amount of stark imagery when describing the abuse that was done, even before the missionaries began to ship slaves from the Gold Coast. The story of scars than moves to Esi from the open callouses that would split open from walking with her father. To the story of Ness, the scars Esi had from the “five lashes for each minute of Ness’s silence” (71). Ness would inherit the same “intricate scars on her bare shoulders...” that prevented her from working in the house (73). The presence of scars continues all the way from Yaw, who describes his scars being “born of fire” (226), to Majorie. I believe Majorie’s story captures the meaning of the scars when she states, “As a young child, someone had told her that the scars her father wore on his face and her grandmother on her hands and feet were born of great pain” (265). Gyasi’s emphases on scars is a physical reminder that marked each member of the family. Overall, the memories of suffering and bondage from the stone and the presence of scars illustrated the complex story of the cultivation of a new people group in a creative and relatable way.
A source of belonging fortifies one’s human dignity. Having a place and/or a people group one feels apart of is essential in defining oneself. Self-identification encourages the manifestation of specific values and cultural aspects native to where one finds belonging.
ReplyDeleteWhen an individual has two conflicting identities composing his or herself, there is an identity crisis. This individual, then, can not belong to a specific people group and lives without the fellowship and community belonging encourages.
In Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi, three prominent people groups are evident: the British, the Asantes, and the Fantes. However, as colonization is introduced to Ghana, these races and ethnicities are mixed. British men marry Ghanaian women, procreating mixed-race children. These children inherit the lifestyle of his or her father, but the values and culture of both parental figures of different ethnicities. Therefore, there is inner-confliction as the child tries to relate to the native children and the white children.
An example of this is Quey’s story. As a young boy, he had a difficult time connecting with other children. Thus, “Quey had been a lonely child”(Gyasi, 53). The difficulty was a result of being neither purely White, nor purely African American. When he meets Cudjo, a pure, native boy from the Fante village, Cudjo asks, “Are you white”(Gyasi, 55)? Quey replies, by saying he is not white, but instead, “like” Cudjo. Cudjo, in opposition, “held his hand out and demanded that Quey do the same, until they were standing arm to arm, skin touching skin”(Gyasi, 55). Cudjo then replies, “Not like me”(Gyasi, 55). This response demeans Quey’s identity as a half-caste child.
Quey’s son, James, provides another example of the loss of belonging in regard to a race or identity. At his grandfather’s funeral, James encounters a beautiful girl. “Respectfully, I will not shake the hand of a slaver”(Gyasi, 96), she says, withholding the customary gesture of condolence. James is perplexed. He too is a West African, but he is half-caste. Partly White and living in the castle, James is assumed to be a proponent of the slave trade. However, he abandons this way of life to live with the beautiful girl from the funeral. Therefore, establishing a new threshold of his belonging.
In the United States, Blacks served as means of exploitation. In the novel, H served as a source of cheap utility. His humanity was not adhered to. After years serving in the coal mines, “He thought about going back home, but realized that he didn’t know where home was. There was nothing left for him on the old plantations he’d worked, and he had no family to speak of”(Gyasi, 166). H’s lack of a place of home, a place to belong, was perpetuated by the racist, structural forces enacted during his lifetime. To the state, Blacks belonged to the purpose of utility for economic benefit.
Throughout the novel, human dignity is hindered by the inability to identify as a specific ethnicity or race: inability to find belonging. Therefore, encumbering one’s development of self.