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.