Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi 

This is the first time that I have hesitated to write a review of the book I have just read because I am afraid no matter what I say I won’t be able to tell you how much this book has affected me and changed me, and how much I love this book with everything in me, every fibre of my body, of my heart and of my soul!

This book is about slavery, a brutal and heart breaking fiction about slavery. It is about two half-sisters who never know each other, their fate and the consequences of what happened to them or their generations to come. One was forced to marry the trader of slaves, the other one was sold as a slave. Each chapter is about the story and the heart breaking truth of what happened to each generation in parallel. From Gold Coast Africa to cotton picking Mississippi. I can’t believe it is Yaa’s debut novel. I am in awe and will bow to her for this incredible piece of fiction, for her ability to make me connect with each single character within just by a couple of pages. The author has an outstanding ability to tell the life story of each character and their struggle in this incredible yet heart-breaking journey she has taken me on, which I will never ever forget.

“Evil begets evil. It grows, it transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that evil in the world began as the evil in your own home.” I feel so sad, I feel despair! It is brutal, it is ugly, it left me shaken and a piece of my soul is missing forever after reading this book. But this is nothing, nothing compared to all the tears that were shed in the dungeon, all the whippings and murder in the cotton fields, all the slaughter in the African soil, all the heartbreak for childressless mother, all the lonlinessness for motherless and fatherless children, for all the injustice, all the lost souls in the ocean sea and all the lost stories buried in red sands, coal mines and our past.

History is story-telling. Our grandmother tells it to our mother, our mother to us, we to our children, our children to theirs and so on and on. I have cried every single night reading this book, I have dreamt about red sands, white castles and cotton fields. If you ask me to tell a story, it will be this one.

5/5 stars!

Title: Homegoing; Author: Yaa Gyasi; Publisher: Penguin