Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing should indeed be regarded as an historical book, which has beautifully engulf various themes and lifestyles that captures totality of humanity. This ranges from gender to race, to migration, to question of identity, to mythology, to bit of magical realism, to colonialism, to neocolonialism and different philosophies.

The novel centers on Ghana history and lays tentacle on how the contact with the European has shattered African culture and heritage. It paints how blacks migrate to Europe, their treatment over there and how the whites treat blacks even in their home (Africa).

The novel opens with the story of a woman Baaba in Fanteland who maltreats her surrogate daughter because she is the result of her husband’s adultery with her slave(Maame). The slave gave birth to two children of which she takes one (Esi) and leaves the other (Effia) in care of Baaba.
Effia faces hardship and maltreatment from Maame but she enjoys her paternal comfort to the little that she could.

Despite being called Effia the Beauty and the chief of the land having interest in her, Baaba does not want her to get married to the affluent family (Abeeku Chief of Fanteland), she does not want her in her surroundings, she however marries her off to a white slave master (James Collins). And they both give birth to Quey Collins.

Quey Collins however gives birth to James Richard Collins who does not want to pick up his family’s legacy and does not want to enjoy the wealth of which his family has gathered through slavery. He elopes from his town Fanteland to another town where he is not known with Akosua Mensah (Although he has been betrothed to a young lady right from childhood, he does not like his betrothed wife when he grows up).

He starts his wretched life in his new settlement where he is known as the “Unlucky man”, a name he earns due to his bad luck in things he lays his hands upon, farming especially. James gives birth to Abena Collins. Due to her father’s pedigree, she finds it difficult to get a man for herself, because no one wants to associate with the family of the “unlucky man” for them not to contract such bad luck.

Abena however gets pregnant for her best friend Ohene Nyarko and when she is about to give birth she runs to the missionary to save her. Despite the fact that she is being beaten, threatened and maltreated by the missionary for her to conform and convert into Christianity and forbid and forsake her hearten ways, she insists and stands firm on her faith as against the missionary’s.
However, after her death she is burnt by the missionary alongside her property except a black pendant which has been transferred right from her first generation –her slave mother, Maame.

Abena gives birth to Akua Collins whom is known for her wretched life also. She also earns her name as the “Crazy Woman” because of her mental condition. During her childhood she is being kept under the watch of the missionary and she studies their way. Though she has a lot of questions to ask based on the missionary’s way of life and how inhuman they behave despite preaching peace and holiness, she has no one to run to who will satisfy her curiosity, not her herbalist friend or the missionary could quench her thirst.

She eventually earns her freedom (forcefully) when Asamoah Agyekum asks for her hand in marriage, and on the day she leaves the missionary’s abode, she learns about her parent’s death and has since then been tormented in her dream by a woman of fire who seeks for her children, this leads to sleepless night for her and the burning of a white man of which her husband partakes complicates her issue, her horrific dream vehemently continues and she has lesser or no sleep any longer.

After giving birth to each of her three children Abena, Ama and Yaw Agyekum (a male) she thinks she will find solace and peace of mind and won’t be tormented by the woman in her dream but the reversed is the case. One night while sleeping and having another series of her torment, she sets her house on fire with her children and her husband with one leg (which he lost due to the war between the blacks and the whites). Her two children burn to death and only her son could be saved by her husband but the boy sustains burn on his face which leaves a scar on him. Akua herself gets her fingers and her face burnt also.

Yaw Agyekum, then is being sent to the missionary school by the community because they do not want him to have anything to do with the Crazy woman, and because his father is dead, the community takes responsibility over him. He gets educated and still does not go to visit his mother in Edweso because of the scar she left on him. He eventually goes to visit his mother after fifteen years with Esther who was initially his house help and they both eventually gets married. They move to America and give birth to Marjori.

However, on the other part of the family, Esi Asare is being taken captive and sold to James Collins, (Husband of her unknown twin sister) where her life becomes miserable in the dungeon where slaves are being kept and are maltreated. She gets raped by one of the soldiers and she gives birth to Ness Stockham.
Ness Stockham being the daughter of a slave is also sold into slavery in another plantation in the hand of who is referred to as the Devil because of his wickedness and his harsh treatment towards the black and the slaves. There, she gets married to Sam and they both give birth to Kojo. They both decide not to allow their son to suffer the same fate they are suffering; they however give the child to a woman (Margaret) who helps them to take Kojo to America where he starts a new life with Margaret.

Kojo gets to America and earn his Surname Freeman, as anyone who migrates to America is being called Freeman, but there, he faces different racial challenges, arrests and maltreatment from the whites. He marries Anna Foster and gives birth to: Agnes, Beulah, Cato, Daly, Eurias, Felicity, Gracie and H. Black.
H. Black being a first class black, and a born freeman does not enjoy the luxuries that his parent couldn’t afford and same as his sisters. He has to migrate from the south to the north due to several maltreatments by the whites towards the blacks. On the cause of his migration, he is being arrested by the cops and sentenced to years to mine for the rich ones. Another world entirely where they are not seen as human but subjects and machines that mines gold for the white. There, different people are being sent there because of crimes such as: looking at the white, not allowing the white to pass before they do, and all sort. Also, some white are being sent there because of serious offences such as killing. However, the treatment in the mining site is so bad and hazardous to their health.

H. works for his years of sentence and eventually gets free, works as a free miner and gets his pay and gives birth to Willie Black, and Hazel but he eventually dies, due to his long years of unsafe mining.

Willie gets married to Robert Clifton, they both give birth to Carson “Sonny’ Clifton but Robert Clifton leaves Willie for a white woman, Willie gets entangled with Elijah who also is not serious with the relationship and leaves her alone with the children. Clifton marries Amani and they both give birth to Zeluma. And Zeluma gives birth to Marcus Cliifton.

As fate will have it, Marcus coincidentally meets Marjorie Agyeum and they both travel to Cape Coast, their root, unknowing to Marcus who travels there just as a tourist. And both offspring of Maame goes back home, though one Zeluma knows her root, Marcus does not, and this is as a result of slavery, colonization and maltreatment of the whites towards the blacks, Marcus family (Ness Stockham).

Yaa Gyasi, beautifully builds the plot in a fascinating way that shows different forms of suffering. It unravels how Africans started slavery themselves, how they sell their fellow blacks as slaves to the whites and how the whites also enslave Africans.

She also is able to succinctly portray colonialism and neocolonialism in Africa and her environs.

The text therefore has (though not limited to) the following themes: Love, discrimination, slavery, migration, racism, colonization and neo-colonization; culture contact and culture clash; and religious enslavement.
Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing should indeed be regarded as an historical book, which has beautifully engulf various themes and lifestyle that captures totality of humanity, Blacks especially.

©Joshua Oladebo, 2023