Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Length: 320 pages
Audiobook Length: 13 hours and 11 minutes
First Published: 2016
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Publisher’s Description
Ghana, eighteenth century: two half sisters are born into different villages, each unaware of the other. One will marry an Englishman and lead a life of comfort in the palatial rooms of the Cape Coast Castle. The other will be captured in a raid on her village, imprisoned in the very same castle, and sold into slavery.
One of Oprah’s Best Books of the Year and a PEN/Hemingway award winner, Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem. Yaa Gyasi’s extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed—and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.
Quotes from Homegoing
The family is like the forest: if you are outside it is dense; if you are inside you see that each tree has its own position.
Weakness is treating someone as though they belong to you. Strength is knowing that everyone belongs to themselves.
No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free.
There should be no room in your life for regret. If in the moment of doing you felt clarity, you felt certainty, then why feel regret later?
About Yaa Gyasi
Yaa Gyasi is the author of two novels: Homegoing and Transcendent Kingdom. She was born in Ghana, grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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