Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

A quiet book club this month, but no less interesting. As always, it was fascinating to hear what everyone connected to in this book, in particular, which characters/chapters stood out. One of the things we discussed was the authors choice to use different characters viewpoints throughout the novel, which was also reflected in Fingersmith, and a book that I am reading currently. Although Homegoing takes this one step further but adding in the new dimension of time.

Anyway, thoughts and comments below. Feel free to join in and let us know what you thought!

The difficulty of reading about the slave trade

Repercussions

Some read it one chapter at a time, so they could take a break and process

Others read in chunks

Following characters quite hard, even with the family tree

Some felt it spoilt the flow

Read like a collection of short stories

Some found the ending predictable

Sliding Doors / The Butterfly Effect

Educational and informative

Questioning history – fact / emotionally truthful / politically truthful

Important to not forget about Britain’s role in this part of history

Story shows a lot of nuance

Integration into new worlds without forgetting roots

Akua’s chapter is very hard to read – she bears the brunt of the family’s history

Water. Green

Some found the American characters relatable

Early chapters are about survival, tradition and ritual

Each generation is trying to connect to the past

Homegoing – all of them are looking back

No sense of oral history, the link is broken due to circumstances

History is traditionally written by the victors

All isolated

A snapshot

Is it important that the characters are all related?

Liked the way it was written

 

• Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Our next book club meeting is Tuesday 30th April at 7pm in the Reading Room of Insole Court House, where we’ll be discussing Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.