Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a beautifully-crafted book with characters that feel alive and real. In Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, we follow the lives of two half-sisters in Ghana who never meet – one who is sold into slavery, the other who is married off to a British slave trader.

The author beautifully weaves a link from generation to generation, depicting the horror and trauma visited on their lives and on Ghana by slavery. It's deeply tragic and depicts injustice and evil affecting an unfathomable number of lives for generations.

Those lives and families are bound together down through the years, no matter how far they travel from home, often in ways they don't even realize.

The different places and time periods the author takes us to all feel like we're getting a window into the past, and you know Gyasi must have spent massive time on research to make these lives so realistic and vibrant.

The writing is wonderful, the story intricate and layered. The tale of all those lives and events is heartbreaking and harrowing and beautiful and important. I'll be looking forward to what Gyasi does next, which is already on the way: her next book, Transcendent Kingdom, comes out in September.

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