Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi
2016
Rating: 2

I gave Homegoing 122 pages, because the subject matter — the African slave trade as it plays out across generations of African slaves and African slavers, moving from West Africa to the U.S. — was interesting. In the end I put it down because the language, the characterization, the sense of place, were all thoroughly mediocre. It’s just plain bad writing. The characters do not surprise, nor do they come to life. There is a truly unfortunate lack of specific detail which would have made the story more vivid. No visual surprises.

Examples:

“Before long the men came in. Abeeku looked as a chief should look, Effia thought, strong and powerful, like he could lift ten women above his head and toward the sun.”

“Baaba had said that Effia’s curse was one of a failed womanhood, but it was Cobbe who had prophesied about a sullied lineage. Effia couldn’t help but think that she was fighting against her own womb, fighting against the fire children.”

“The need to call this thing ‘good’ and this thing ‘bad', this thing ‘white’ and this thing ‘black,’ was an impulse that Effia did not understand. In her village, everything was everything. Everything bore the weight of everything else.”

The one thing Homegoing did have going for it was the rudiments of a decent plot. And the plot was interesting enough that I almost stuck with the book — and for some readers it might be worth sticking with it — but the lifeless prose just wore me down.