Homegoing

 Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (2016) 305 pages

I loved this novel. I listened to the first half as an audiobook then had to switch to print. It is an epic multi-generational saga that in some ways is fourteen separate, but connected, coming-of-age tales. "Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana" on Africa's southwest coast. One stays in Africa and the other is sold into slavery in America. The chapters alternate between Effia's and Esi's descendents. This is historical fiction through a range of historical time periods. The historical details and variety of lived experiences of the African Diaspora are described with such liveliness. There are stories of love, of suffering, of labor, of grief, of colonization, and of discovering a black person's place in the world.