![]() ![]() Carrying on in the tradition of her foremothers-like Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat, Assia Djebar and Bessie Head-Gyasi has created a marvelous work of fiction that both embraces and re-writes history. Luckily for those ancestors, and for those of America’s black citizens, that theft (of body, of language) is not the end of their story. Language, Gyasi says, was literally taken away from her West African ancestors during the slave trade. The 26-year-old, a graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, speaks plainly of a phenomenon that is specific to all artists, but which has distinctly complex implications for black women authors-that call to speak for those ancestors who could not speak for themselves. It’s a quality they share with their creator, Gyasi. And while each descendant experiences life (and blackness and love and family) in distinct ways, these characters have at least one thing in common: the inability to ignore a certain call they hear, sometimes in their minds, sometimes in their very bones, from those who came before them. The book, an overwhelming page-turner-as addictive as a binge-worthy TV show-follows their two bloodlines all the way to the present day. ![]() Effia is from Fanteland and marries a British slave dealer, while Esi, a member of the Asante nation, is sold into slavery. ![]() In Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel Homegoing, every character granted his or her own chapter is a descendent of two 18th-century, Ghanaian half-sisters. ![]()
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