Rezension

Beautiful and complex family saga, one of my highlights of 2017

Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing
von Yaa Gyasi

Bewertet mit 5 Sternen

„Homegoing“ is the story of two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, and their descendants. One sister remains on the African Gold Coast (now Ghana) and marries a British soldier involved in slave trading, one is sold into slavery to America.

Yaa Gyasi's debut novel got a lot of hype in the last year and it is well deserved in my opinion. She manages to cover 300 years of slavery and colonialism in Africa and the U.S. through describing the fates of a handful of characters. A very ambitious concept, extraordinarily well implemented.

Each character, each descendant of one of the sisters, gets one chapter to cover their life, their way of living and of thinking. This way, the reader gets only a small glimpse at the characters and a lot is left to our imagination. However, the author managed to create sympathy and understanding for her characters in such a short time. I think, each of the characters could deserve a novel for themselves, they are fleshed-out so well. Each character feels authentic and fits well into the narration.

Aside from giving slavery an individual face, the underlying motive of the story in my opinion was the importance of belonging for humans. Belonging to a family, a culture, finding your place in society and to achieve a self-determined way to live one's life. One character only feels „at home“ by going back to where he came from. Also, the necklace that is handed down to the bext generation in one family and which is lost in the other is a strong metaphor for this topic in my opinion.

Yaa Gyasi's innovative concept of storytelling is accompanied by a beautiful way of writing. The sentences seem to flow smoothly past. I'm already looking forward to Gyasi's next story.

„Homegoing“ quickly became one of my favourite reads of this year.