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Homegoing Syllabus
Author: Morgan Holloman-Bryant
Editor: Sierra Croker
Facebook | Instagram Table of Contents
06 Author History
07 Book History
08 Reading Tips
09 Overview & Motifs
12 The Discussion
24 General Discussion Questions
24 Final Thoughts
25 Further Reading/Resources Author History
Yaa Gyasi is a Ghanaian-American novelist born in Mampong, Ghana in 1989. Her family moved to the United States when Yaa was just a few years old in order for her father to complete his Ph.D. at Ohio State University. Following the completion of his program, the family also lived in both Illinois and Tennessee, Yaa’s family finally settled in Huntsville, Alabama when she was 10 years old. In her younger years, Yaa’s affinity for reading and writing grew and she sought solace in novels as her “closest friends”. After years of battling stigma attached to her experiences as a young immigrant child in Alabama, she was introduced to Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and decided to pursue a career in writing. After high school, Gyasi attended Stanford University where she earned her Bachelor's degree in English and worked briefly at a San Francisco startup company before attending the University of Iowa where she earned her MFA in their creative writing program and held a Dean’s Graduate Research Fellowship. Published in 2016, her debut novel, Homegoing was inspired by a 2009 trip to Ghana that she was able to take after receiving a grant from her undergraduate institution. During this trip, she took a tour of the Cape Coast Castle and was overwhelmed by the history, leading her to begin writing Homecoming. While the now extremely popular novel was merely a draft, it earned Gyasi a seven-figure advance nearly ensuring the widespread success of her novel.
6 Book History
Following the 2016 release of Homegoing, Gyasi was chosen by Ta-Nehisi Coates as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees. Additionally, the novel also was selected for the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award, the PEN/Hemingway award for best first book, and the American Book Award for contributions to diversity in American literature. At the beginning of 2020, Yaa was awarded the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature by the Vilcek Foundation.
7 READING TIPS Tips for Fresh Readers TIPS FOR RETURNING 1. You do not have to have profound thoughts right away: Everyone reads and digests at a different pace. Take your READERS time in understanding the text but you do not need to dissect it immediately. Make a note of any points that are significant to you and move on. 1. Put the book in context: Times have changed and so have you. Before rereading 2. Set aside 15-20 mins a day to read: Much like power think about who you were, and where you nap — a power read — can energize your reading and were in life the first time you read the book. help you focus. You do not need large chunks of time. Set Think about who was influencing you/your aside 15-20 mins to read a day and make sure you have no thoughts. (School, friends, family, news etc.) distractions during this time.
2. Be Critical: First reads are a time to be 3. Reflect on what you read: a) What were the open-minded and give the author lead themes and/or major events that had taken place in way to understand their thoughts. Second your selected readings? reads you can be much more critical of the work and its intentions. So get on your 4. Take notes: a) Highlight terms, phrases, quotes etc soapbox boo we got some boxes on that may immediately grab your attention reserve too.
5. Build a personal glossary: If you don’t know a word, 3. Focus on Few Chapters at a Time: circle it, get the definition and reread the section in For non-fiction (and some fiction) it’s not context. This may help you come to a new understanding totally necessary to reread the book of the text or discover concepts you didn’t notice before. chronologically from start to finish. Try focusing on themes that you may have 6. Discuss the book: Healthy discussion on what you grazed over the first time around and already know can entice you to read more and that’s what choose a few chapters to lean into at a time. the #SmartBrownGirl Book Club is here for. Join in on our discussions. Post your questions to the Facebook Group.
7. Author Background: When approaching a text that you’re unfamiliar with, it may be beneficial to do some quick background research on the author, as it can help provide insight on what the text may be discussing.
8 Overview & Motifs:
Sankofa, a word in the Twi language of Ghana translates to “Go back and get it.” The Sankofa symbol, known as the ‘Asante Adinkra’ is stylized as a heron or heart shaped image. Originating from the Akan tribe of Ghana, the word symbolizes the Akan people’s lifelong devotion and quest for knowledge. The Akan people believe that there must be a continuous movement towards new learning as time moves forward as to not neglect and forget the history of the African continent and all of her people.
While reading Homecoming, evaluate and make note of the historical references in Gyasi’s text. As a Ghanaian-American writer, much of Gyasi’s motivation and knowledge revolves around a diasporic approach to understanding colonialism, oppression and heritage. With Gyasi citing Toni Morrison as a personal inspiration, it is also interesting to consider the transnational feminist lens through which we can analyze and understand a Black American and Black African experience.
Evaluate Gyasi’s characters and their personal experiences, specifically as they are tied to their family’s history. Research the following motifs, keep track of characters and make note of them as you read the novel.
9 Homegoing Family Tree
Based on information in the text, the timelines for each character are as follows: Effia and Esi’s storyline ranges from the 1760s to the 1780s with their children Quey and Ness’s stories being placed between 1800 and the 1820s. James and Kojo, Effia and Esi’s grandchildren’s stories are between the 1820s and 1860s with Abena and H following in the late 1800s, somewhere between 1860 and the 1890s. Akua and Willie, Abena and H’s children have stories from the 1890s to the 1920s. Yaw and Sonny’s stories follow these between the 1920s and 1980s. Marjorie and Marcus, the latest descendants are sharing their stories in the early 2000s.
10 Motifs:
Heritage, History & Cultural Identity: The foundation of Homegoing lies within its overarching premise: the exploration and importance of African/African-American heritage and culture. The novel follows the descendants of Effia and Esi, the daughters of an Asante woman named Maame. Each sister is representative of African and African American culture and their lineages depict the tumultuous outcomes of either path. With neither being uncompromised by the consequences of European colonialism and American chattel slavery, Effia and Esi’s stories are a reminder of how important our “roots”, history and cultures are. As each chapter of the novel focuses on a different descendant of either woman, Gyasi reinforces how cultural heritage and identity are the crux of individual identity.
Racism, Chattel Slavery, Systemic Oppression: Racism, slavery and oppression are an integral part of both Effia and Esi’s lineage. Ultimately, racism fuels the storylines of Effia, Esi and their descendants. Even after slavery is abolished, racism continues to fester and despite her marrying a white man Effia and her descendants still experience oppression.
Colonization/Colonialism: Homegoing begins with the introduction of British colonizers along the Gold Coast (Present Day Ghana). The novel asserts that colonization serves as a means of destruction and that members of a Black African lineage are able to be complicit in the perpetuation of oppression.
Family Structure & Progress: Family structure and progress is a key theme that lies at the crux of the novel. Throughout the entirety of the text, readers are called to follow complex lineages while identifying the inextricable links from generation to generation. Complicated parental relationships and childhoods fuel the quest for healing and knowledge from Esi and Effia down to their latest descendants Marjorie and Marcus.
Gendered Oppression/Sexism: While the primary form of inequality and stratification depicted within Homegoing lies within its racial inequality and discrimination, gender inequality often intersects at various points within the novel reminding readers of the multifaceted oppression of Black women. The patriarchal communities on both the Gold Coast and in America breed environments that strip women of their autonomy, making them targets for sexually violent men. Men experience the ill-effects of patriarchy as well with the assumptions of their strength, brutal working conditions, and a general physical degradation and abuse. Men are expected to take on the role of the masculine: stepping into positions that require physical strength while dawning an emotionless demeanor.
11 The Discussion
PART I: EFFIA:
The novel begins with the story of Effia, born in Fante in the mid 1700s. A fire begins to rage the night she is born destroying crops and trees. Her father, a man named Cobbe Otcher leaves the new baby Effia with his first wife, Baaba so that he can go survey the damage done by the fire. After seeing that several of his yams are burned, he believes that the fire will haunt his family line for all generations to come. During her infancy, Effia does not nurse well with Cobbe’s wives and Cobbe contemplates leaving her in the forest for the God Nyame to take. Just a few years after Effia is born, her father and Baaba welcome their first son whom Effia accidentally drops. This prompts Baaba to beat her which then leads Cobbe to beat Baaba. This cycle of violence continues for years to come. At the age of 15, Effia menstruates for the first time but is told by Baaba to keep it a secret. This incites a chain of events that eventually leads to Effia marrying a white British man named James Collins. Effia becomes pregnant and around the same time, she receives word that her father is preparing to die. After traveling back to see him before he dies, she is informed that Baaba is not in fact her biological mother. Her birth mother, the one who left the Black stone pendant, was a house girl who ran away into the fire on the night of Effia's birth. That day, Cobbe died.
Questions To Consider • What does Baaba’s poor treatment of Effia tell us about family connections? ‣ Effia is not Baaba’s biological daughter. • How are gender stereotypes reinforced as Abeeku and Effia prepare to greet each other for courtship? • What is Baaba’s purpose for insisting that Effia not share with anyone else that she has gotten her menstrual cycle? How does Baaba negotiate with Effia to keep the secret? • What is the significance of the black stone Baaba gives to Effia following the agreement that she will marry James Collins. ‣ Furthermore, think about the moment of negotiation between Abeeku and James Collins for Effia’s hand in marriage. James Collins pays “thirty pounds up front and twenty-five shillings a month in tradable goods to Baaba as a bride gift” (p. 15) for Effia. What does Abeeku’s final decision suggest about the role of women in this community? How does Abeeku leverage Effia’s beauty and what does his willingness to do so help us to understand about the relationships between women, beauty, and economics? • How is colonialism preserved and perpetuated throughout James and Effia’s marriage? Is Effia complicit in this perpetuation of colonialism? If so, how? If not, why? Does she benefit?
12 Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
“He knew then that the memory of the fire that burned, then fled, would haunt him, his children, and his children’s children for as long as the line continued.” When Effia turns twelve, she “blossoms” into a young woman. The men of her village are eager for her to begin her menstrual cycle as this will make her suitable for marriage. Excited to potentially marry the young girl, men begin to send gifts to her family as suitors. Effia worries about being able to bear children are a byproduct of the gendered oppression and stereotype instilled into women by culture and society: The value of a woman is placed upon their ability to bear children and act as nurturing mothers.
PART I: ESI
Esi is Maame and Big Man’s daughter and Effia’s half-sister. She grows up in an Asante village and witnesses firsthand how her home village is profiting from the capturing and selling of enslaved Africans. In many ways, she disregards until she herself is captured and sent to the Cape Coast Castle and packed into the dungeon while her half-sister Effia lives an elegant life upstairs. One day, she is raped by a British soldier and becomes pregnant with her daughter Ness. They are then shipped to America and briefly work on the same plantation until Ness is sold. The reality of chattel slavery effects Esi’s descendants who are plagued by the harsh impact of institutionalized racism in America.
Questions To Consider • What does Maame’s treatment of Abronoma tell you about her? What kind of person is Maame? How does this influence what kind of person Esi becomes? • Consider Maame’s loss of her children and also when Esi realizes she would “learn what it meant to be un-whole” (p. 42). Other women are separated from their children, while others, like Esi who feels a sense of loss when she learns she has a sister. What do these instances suggest about the impact of loss and familial separation on parents and their children? • What do you think happens to the black stone Maame gave Esi? What is the significance of the stone? • What do you think happened to Esi at the end of the chapter? Where do they take her?
Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
• “Weakness is treating someone as though they belong to you. Strength is knowing that everyone belongs to themselves.” • When he had finished, he looked horrified, disgusted with her. As though he were the one who had had something taken from him. As though he were the one who had been violated.
13 PART I: QUEY The QueyDiscussion is the son of James Collins and Effia. As a biracial Black and white man, he struggles to find place in either culture. He reluctantly takes on his father’s slave trading and suppresses his same sex desires by marrying a woman named Nana Yaa to make both his dad and uncle proud. He comes to expect his son James to prioritize family above personal fulfillment. Unfortunately for him, James is not nearly as concerned or preoccupied with pleasing his father.
Questions To Consider:
• How does Quey’s marriage to the Asante woman and subsequent birth of their son James reinvent the dynamic of the union seen between his parents? • What are your opinions on the commentary regarding biracial identity and “choosing” as presented in the conversation between Quey and Cudjo? • Quey isn’t too fond of the slave trade but obliges in following in his father’s footsteps. How does this decision speak to the theme of colonialism that permeates the novel?
Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
• “He forgot in that second that his own father was British, and when he remembered later, he realized he didn’t care. He felt only that he belonged, fully and completely” • “In England he’d gotten to see the way black people lived in white countries, Indians and Africans who were packed twenty or more to a room, who ate the slop the pigs left behind, who coughed and coughed and coughed endlessly, all together, a symphony of sickness. He knew the dangers that waited him across the Atlantic, but he knew too the danger in himself” • “Quey had wanted to cry but that desire embarrassed him. He knew that he was one of the half-caste children of the Castle, and, like the other half-caste children, he could not fully claim either half of himself, neither his father's whiteness nor his mother’s blackness. Neither England nor the Gold Coast.”
14 PART I: NESS The NessDiscussion is the daughter of Esi, born to her following her being raped by a British soldier. She is born soon after Esi arrives in America, and she spends her whole life on various plantations. She is taken away from her mother and sold to a plantation she calls “Hell,” where she is forced to marry another slave named Sam. Eventually she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son, Kojo. Following his birth, she refuses to remain on the plantation and decides to escape its brutality. Ness and Sam are caught, and Sam is hanged, but Kojo survives. She spends the rest of her life on Thomas Allan Stockham’s plantation.
Questions To Consider: • What is the significance of Ness’s name? What are its origins and how does it honor her heritage? • Ness has flashbacks to Hell and the Devil - what is Hell to her and who is the Devil as she remembers? • What is the significance of sounds and silence in this chapter?
Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
• “She tried to remember the Twi that Esi used to speak to her. Tried to still her mind until all that was left was the thin, stern line of her mother’s lips, lips that used to usher out words of love in a tongue that Ness could no longer quite grasp. Phrases and words would come to her, mismatched or lopsided, wrong”
PART I: JAMES
James is the son born of Quey and Nana Yaa. He grows disgusted by his family’s participation in the slave trade and unlike his father, refuses to participate. He runs away from the wife who had been promised to him, Amma Atta, and instead goes to live with a poor Asante girl named Akosua, with whom he has a daughter named Abena. His crops fail and he lives a rather unlucky life earning him that as a nickname. However, James remains thankful and certain that he no longer has to participate in the slave trade.
Questions To Consider: • What is the significance of James’s full name? • Why is it so important that James marries Amma Atta? How far back does this go? • How has the British presence in Africa affected the lives of the Africans (as reflected in the book so far)? • James questions the girl who refuses to shake his hand for being a slaver. But to James, their ancestors had gained power by capturing slaves. Does the girl’s ancestry matter in her ability to judge someone else for gaining wealth from the slave trade? How does James’s
family history of selling slaves affect him? 15 Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
• “There’s more at stake here than just slavery, my brother. It’s a question of who will own the land, the people, the power. You cannot stick a knife in a goat and then say, Now I will remove my knife slowly, so let things be easy and clean, let there be no mess. There will always be blood” • “The British were no longer selling slaves to America, but slavery had no ended, and his father did not seem to think that it would end. They would just trade one type of shackles for another, trade physical ones that wrapped around wrists and ankles for the invisible ones that wrapped around the mind”
PART I: KOJO
Kojo is the son of Sam and Ness, the grandson of Esi. He escapes the plantation with Ma Aku after the capture of his mother and murder of his father. Ma Aku brings him to freedom in the north and raises him as her son. He works on boats in Baltimore and marries a woman named Anna before starting a family. Despite him being a free man, slavery still exists and the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act means that Kojo, as a runaway can legally back into slavery. He becomes extremely fearful of law enforcement and avoids them at all costs. Immediately after the act is passed, his wife Anna is kidnapped leaving him to raise their daughter Agnes alone. Sadly, he doesn’t know that Anna is pregnant with their son H.
Questions To Consider: • Why does Ma Aku scold Kojo after he is kicked out of the church? • How is Jo’s reaction to the kidnapping of Anna exacerbated by memories of being separated from his parents? • What is the role of religion and spirituality in Kojo’s life? • How are gender stereotypes and discrimination linked to partnership and marriage?
Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
• “His free papers named him Kojo Freeman. Free man. Half the ex-slaves in Baltimore had the name. Tell a lie long enough and it will turn to truth.” • “Taking away your name is the first step.” • “The white man’s god is just like the white man. He thinks he is the only god, just like the white man thinks he is the only man. But the only reason he is god instead of Nyame or Chukwu or whoever is because we let him be. We do not fight him. We do not even question him.”
16 PART I: ABENA The AbenaDiscussion is the daughter born of James “Unlucky” and Akosua. She hates her father’s endless bad luck, specifically because it has impacted her ability to be married. She is madly in love with a man named Ohene Nyarko but he refuses to court and marry her until there is a good harvest. She becomes pregnant by him and after he still refuses to marry her, she travels to the missionary church to raise their daughter Akua. Once there, she wishes to be baptized but is accidentally drowned in the process.
Questions To Consider: • What is the significance of the gift Abena’s father gives her before she leaves? • Consider complicity as a recurring theme throughout the duration of the novel. Abena’s father implies that they are all to blame for the slave trade? What does this mean and is there validity in his statement? • How is the relationship between Abena and Ohene Nyarko reminiscent of other relationships in the novel? How does their relationship reinforce gender dynamics?
Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
• “An unmarried twenty-five-year-old woman was unheard of, in her village or any other on this continent or the next. But there were only a few men in her village, and none of them wanted to take a chance with Unlucky's daughter.” • “She did not understand that things could die, despite one’s best efforts to keep them alive. All she knew was that every morning her father watched over the plants, prayed over them, and that each season when the inevitable happened, her father, a man whom she had never seen cry, who greeted each turn of bad luck as though it were a new opportunity, would lift his head high and begin again.”
17 PART II: H
The second portion of Homegoing opens with the story of “H”, a sharecropper who is protesting as four police officers arrest him and throw him into a jail cell. The alleged crime? Looking at a white woman. As Gyasi evokes the spirit of Emmett Till and countless other Black men and boys who have been deemed criminal due to alleged interactions with white women, H and his cellmate discuss the culmination of chattel slavery and how despite the supposed “end”, white people are still able to have Black people arrested with ease. H spends four days in jail before being told he can leave if he’s able to pay a ten dollar fine. Only having half of the money, he is unable to post bail and is chained to a line of men the next morning and sent to work in the coal mines on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama. Most of the other individuals were Black men who had also been arrested for petty crimes. H’s time in Alabama’s convict leasing system is an eerie look into the evolution of chattel slavery despite it having “ended” some years prior. H is never really able to get on his feet. As the descendant of Esi, H’s life doesn’t seem too far off from his ancestor of two generations past.
Questions To Consider: • What is the possible significance of Gyasi including the story of H’s brief relationship with the white convict, Thomas? • What is the importance of names in this chapter? • What does it mean to H to be free? Does he ever achieve freedom?
Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
•“Don’t matter if you was or wasn’t. All they gotta do is say you was. That’s all they gotta do. You think cuz you all big and muscled up, you safe? Naw, dem white folks can’t stand the sight of you. Walkin’ round free as can be. Don’t nobody want to see a black man look like you walkin’ proud as a peacock. Like you ain’t got a lick of fear in you”. • “H could hardly remember being free, and he could not tell if what he missed was the freedom itself or the capacity for memory”
18 PART II: AKUA
Akua is the daughter born to Abena prior to her unfortunate and accidental death at the hands of the minister. Guilty and apologetic, the minister raises Akua who grows up and marries a man named Asamoah. Together, they have three children named Abee, Ama Serwah and Yaw. Following Yaw’s birth, Akua is haunted by visions of ‘firewoman’ in her rest and in a fit of madness, sets fire to her family’s hut killing her two daughters and badly disfiguring her son Yaw. This act earns her the title of “Crazy Woman”. Yaw is sent away for protection after villagers deem Akua a threat to his safety and following her husband’s death she lives alone with their house girl.
Questions To Consider: • How does Akua’s character and role as a mother complicate gender stereotypes as they rela- te to motherhood? • What is the significance and role of the firewoman that haunts Akua in her dreams? • How does Akua interact with religion and spirituality? • What is the meaning of Akua’s dreams?
Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
• In her dreams the fire was shaped like a woman holding two babies to her heart. The firewoman would carry these two little girls with her all the way to the woods of the Inland and then the babies would vanish, and the firewoman’s sadness would send orange and red and hints of blue swarming every tree and every bush in sight. • You are a sinner and a heathen,” he said. Akua nodded. The teachers had told them this before. “Your mother had no husband when she came here to me, pregnant, begging for help. I helped her because that is what God would have wanted me to do. But she was a sinner and a heathen, like you.” • “What I know now my son: Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home. I'm sorry you have suffered.”
19 PART II: WILLIE
Born to H and Ethe, Willie grows up in Pratt City and marries a man named Robert Clifton in her younger years. Together, they have a son named Carson and relocate to Harlem where Willie wishes to find success as a singer. It doesn’t take long for her to realize that she will struggle to find success, let alone basic work as a Black woman. Meanwhile, her light-skinned husband has no problems finding employment. The couple splits up following a demeaning encounter with a white man, leaving Willie to care for Carson alone. Eventually, she remarries to a poet named Eli and together, they have a daughter named Josephine. Eli is extremely unreliable, leaving the single mother alone for extended periods of time. And while her oldest child, her son Carson is resentful of his mother, she cares for him in his adulthood when he slips into a drug addiction.
Questions To Consider: • How does Willie’s inability to achieve success on her own terms impact her parenting style? • How does gender contribute to Willie and Robert’s job search once they move to Harlem?
Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
•“She was too dark to sing at the Jazzing. That’s what they told her the night she’d come in ready to audition. A very slender and tall man held a paper bag up to her cheek. “‘Too dark,’ he said”. “The idea was appealing to her: her own apartment, more time to spend with Carson. But she knew that she wasn’t meant for that life. She knew that that life wasn’t meant for them”
PART II: YAW
Yaw is the only son of Akua and Asamoah. He deeply resents his mother whose actions left him bearing a permanent scar. In a fit of rage and madness, she set the family’ hut ablaze killing his two sisters and badly burning him. He works as a history teacher at an all boys high school and is hopeful that Ghana will gain independence. His house girl Esther eventually encourages and helps him reconcile with his mother. He then marries Esther and together, they have a daughter named Marjorie.
Questions To Consider: What are Edward and Yaw’s viewpoints on freedom and the method to achieving it? What do you think about Yaw’s lesson to his students about stories and histories? Do you agree with his approach to learning history? Has your own education reflected his sentiments? What is the relationship between Yaw and Esther like?
20 Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
•“This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely on the words of others. Those who were there in the olden days, they told stories to the children so that the children would know, so that the children could tell stories to their children. And so on, and so on. But now we come upon the problem of conflicting stories” • “We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, ‘Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice should come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect picture” • “If we go to the white man for school, we will just learn the way the white man wants us to learn. We will come back and build the country the white man wants us to build. One that continues to serve them. We will never be free”
PART II: SONNY
At the beginning of this section, Sonny is sitting inside of a jail cell waiting for his mother to come bail him out as he reads WEB DuBois’ text “The Souls of Black Folk”. She arrives, broom in hand to save him yet again and he ignores her words as they exit the jail. Sonny, birth name Carson has resented his mother for the entire duration of his life because his father failed to be present. Sonny has worked for the NAACP’s housing team where his duties included traveling around to different Harlem neighborhoods and interviewing people about their living conditions. Through his advocacy work with the NAACP, Sonny was arrested and beaten several times , upsetting his concerned mother, Willie. Ultimately, Sonny who is a descendant of Esi’s bloodline, is a symbol of revolution and the freedom struggle. His devotion to social justice fuels his anger and passion for Black advancement and liberation but never seems to exacerbate much progress in his personal life.
Questions To Consider: • What do you believe is the importance of Sonny’s nickname? • How is the relationship between Sonny and his mother? • How does Sonny view freedom and revolution? • How does Sonny’s relationship with his mother influence his perception and treatment of women?
Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
“We can’t go back to something we ain’t never been to in the first place. It ain’t ours any more. This is.” She swept her hand in front of her, as though she were trying to catch all of Harlem in it, all of New York, all of America.” 21 PART II: MARJORIE
Marjorie is the youngest descendant of the late Effia, born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. She is Yaw and Esther’s daughter and struggles to fit in with either the Black or white students at her Alabama high school. Marjorie is in an interracial relationship while in high school with a white boy named Graham but she soon faces the harsh legacy of Jim Crow and segregation in Alabama when his father and school professionals deem their relationship inappropriate. Graham’s absentminded reinforcement of racial stratification and inequality by deeming Marjorie as “not like other Black girls” is yet another blow to her ongoing identity struggles that aren’t absolved until she meets Marcus. Marjorie adores her grandmother Akua and struggles to cope with her death at the finale of her section, crying out for her grandmother and for Maame- the matriarch of the entire bloodline.
Questions To Consider: • What is Marjorie’s Asante name and what is its overall significance? • How do Marjorie’s struggles with her identity lead her to engaging with her heritage? • Marjorie travels back and forth between Alabama and Ghana, feeling “I don’t fit here or there” (p. 278). ‣ Analyze the ways she attempts to forge connections to her identity as Ghanian- American and how that complex identity helps us understand the complexity of identity. How does receiving the necklace from her grandmother help to ground Marjorie’s idea of home? How does the motif of the necklace affect the structure and overall themes and effectiveness of the book? • How does Yaw’s reconciliation with Akua and Akua’s close relationship with Marjorie facilitate healing for their entire lineage?
Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
•“Her father had told her that the necklace was a part of their family history and she was to never take it off, never give it away. Now it reflected the ocean water before them, gold waves shimmering in the black stone.” • As a last defense, Marjorie had heard him tell the principal that she was “not like other black girls.” And, somehow, that had been worse. She had already given him up. • “Marjorie returned to Alabama three shades darker and five pounds heavier. Her period had come while she was with her grandmother, and the old woman had clapped her hands and sang songs to celebrate Marjorie’s womanhood.”
22 PART II: MARCUS
In the final section of Homegoing, we’re introduced to Marcus, Sonny’s son and the youngest descendant of Esi. Marcus’s story serves as the amalgamation of his lineage thus far and his journey to Ghana with Marjorie reconcilies years of unspoken and unknown strife between their two families. As a young Ph.D. student in Sociology at Stanford University, Marcus has chosen his research topic in order to expound upon his interests while paying homage to his family’s history. Marcus provides a summary of the many time periods and storylines that have been included in the book up until this point, and details the underlying racism and discrimination that manifested many of the occurences in the text. This analysis served as Gyasi’s way of weaving together the path of racism through history and family timelines while also helping readers to understand each person’s experience in a given time period as having been affected by the time period before them.
Questions To Consider: • What is Marcus studying and what roadblocks is he experiencing in his research? • How does Marcus’ trip to Ghana connect back to the larger ancestral premise of Homegoing? • How did Sonny’s understanding of history impact Marcus and his search for ancestral knowledge? • Marcus believes that “most people lived their lives on upper levels, not stopping to peer underneath (298). What does he mean by this? • How is the connection to ancestral knowledge different for Marjorie and Marcus? Consider the impact of the slave trade, their personal experiences and accessibility to the knowledge of their individual lineages.
Takeaway Points/Important Quotes
•“How could he explain to Marjorie that he wasn’t supposed to be here? Alive. Free. That the fact that he had been born, that he wasn’t in a jail cell somewhere, was not by dint of his pulling himself up by the bootstraps, not by hard work or belief in the American Dream, but by mere chance.” • “Here,” Marjorie said. “Have it.” She lifted the stone from her neck, and placed it around Marcus’s. “Welcome home.”
23 GENERAL DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
• What messages are made about the role of relationships between women? • What are the roles of the following symbols throughout the course of the novel? ‣ Fire ‣ Black Stones ‣ Water/Boats • How does patriarchy influence family structure and family values? • What is the value in juxtaposing the vastly different experiences of two Ghanaian born half-sisters and their lineages? • What is the significance of beginning the novel with Effia and Esi and ending with a reu nion between Marjorie and Marcus? Final Thoughts
What were your preliminary thoughts before reading this text? How did you anticipate this text would go?
What is the importance of names in Homegoing? What is the relationship between names and family/culture/identity?
After reading the novel, why do you think Yaa Gyasi chose to title the book Homecoming?
How are women treated throughout the duration of the novel? How is this nuanced by marriage and motherhood?
How has the text helped you to better understand transnational Black feminism? If possible, how do you think you’ll apply these concepts to your own developing research and/or everyday life? Transnational Black Feminism is described by the transnational efforts and ideologies undertaken by Black feminist scholars and activists in a global context.
Can a Black feminist framework be applied to Homegoing? If so, how? Would you classify this novel as Black feminist literature? If so, why? If no, why not?
If any, what are some critiques/suggestions you would offer to the author about this text?
24 FURTHER READINGS/RESOURCES
Additional content & videos that relate to the reading.
Books:
Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route by Saidiya Hartman (Non-Fiction)
Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family by Pauli Murray (Non-Fiction)
The Door of No Return: The History of Cape Coast Castle and the Atlantic Slave Trade by William St. Clair (Non-Fiction)
Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza (Fiction)
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy (Fiction)
The Wedding Gift by Marlen Suyapa Bodden (Fiction)
Copper Sun by: Sharon Draper
Syllabi Author Bio: Morgan Holloman-Bryant is a scholar, writer, and educator from Little Rock, Arkansas. She earned a degree in African/African-American Studies with a concentration in Black girlhood studies from Washington University in St. Louis. She’s an avid researcher, writer and cultural commentator with interests that focus primarily on the intersection of pop culture, race and history. She’s also a full-time mom and part-time blogger preparing to begin her joint J.D./M.A. in Africana studies. Morgan is also a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @themorganjael and on her history & culture blog, www.blackpowerprincess.com.
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