HOMEGOING BY YAA GYASI
The Ultimate Exam Survival Guide
Quick Summary
Homegoing is a sprawling, multi-generational epic that traces the bloodline of two
half-sisters, Effia and Esi, born in 18th-century Ghana. They never meet. Effia is
married off to a British colonizer and lives a life of comfort in the Cape Coast Castle,
while Esi is captured, imprisoned in the dungeons directly beneath her sister, and sold
into American slavery. Over the next three hundred years and eight generations, the
novel alternates between their descendants, tracing Effia’s line through the tribal wars
and colonization of Ghana and Esi’s line through the brutal evolution of systemic
racism in America, from plantations and convict leasing to the Great Migration and the
modern era.
Category Detail
Author Yaa Gyasi
,Publication 2016
Year
Genre Historical Fiction / Family Saga
Structure 14 chapters, each from the perspective of a different
descendant, alternating between the two family lines.
Core Settings Ghana: Cape Coast Castle, Asante and Fante villages,
Kumasi.
America: Southern plantations, Baltimore, Alabama coal
mines, Harlem (NY), California.
Core Conflict The enduring legacy of slavery, complicity, and the
struggle to reclaim a severed history.
, Key Symbols The two black stone pendants (representing severed
heritage), fire (trauma), and water (separation and eventual
reunion).
Visualizing the Connections
The Ultimate Exam Survival Guide
Quick Summary
Homegoing is a sprawling, multi-generational epic that traces the bloodline of two
half-sisters, Effia and Esi, born in 18th-century Ghana. They never meet. Effia is
married off to a British colonizer and lives a life of comfort in the Cape Coast Castle,
while Esi is captured, imprisoned in the dungeons directly beneath her sister, and sold
into American slavery. Over the next three hundred years and eight generations, the
novel alternates between their descendants, tracing Effia’s line through the tribal wars
and colonization of Ghana and Esi’s line through the brutal evolution of systemic
racism in America, from plantations and convict leasing to the Great Migration and the
modern era.
Category Detail
Author Yaa Gyasi
,Publication 2016
Year
Genre Historical Fiction / Family Saga
Structure 14 chapters, each from the perspective of a different
descendant, alternating between the two family lines.
Core Settings Ghana: Cape Coast Castle, Asante and Fante villages,
Kumasi.
America: Southern plantations, Baltimore, Alabama coal
mines, Harlem (NY), California.
Core Conflict The enduring legacy of slavery, complicity, and the
struggle to reclaim a severed history.
, Key Symbols The two black stone pendants (representing severed
heritage), fire (trauma), and water (separation and eventual
reunion).
Visualizing the Connections
