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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Gyasi uses the stories of multiple characters through the generations to tell the history of the slave trade on Ghana's Cape Coast and to illustrate generational trauma. This is the way history should be taught, in my opinion, but I did not enjoy Gyasi's style of dropping the reader into a new character's storyline years later and then backtracking to explain how they became who they are. It's an important history to tell but not a terribly pleasant one to read. Never Ending Story Media:Audio Read by: Dominic Hoffman Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins Homegoing tells multiple stories from over 300years of Ghanian history through the eyes of fourteen people over seven generations and two continents, Africa and America. The fourteen individuals are presented one by one, alternating between each branch of a family that splits between two Ghanaian nations. The links between generations form two single strands from the huge binary tree whose root starts with one man and his progeny - the half-sisters raised separately. Subsequent generations are followed, two from each branch chosen from maternal or paternal lines with no apparent pattern. Each generation-2 sister is given half of a black stone that is meant to be passed down to their children for generations. How this happens isn’t really dealt with but it’s no surprise that at least one half survives whole for 300 years. At about generation-4 I started to lose track of the two branches of the family but did try to follow the stone. Admittedly this lack of pattern as to which two sub-branches would be in the next two chapters made the book interesting. I was forced to concentrate. Who had the stone? Who married who in the previous generation? What happened to the other children? I never knew who would pop up in the next chapters. To add to the morass, there are multiple time shifts per chapter. I started counting them for interest. In at least one chapter time shifts within a single paragraph. While listening to Ness reminisce about her life, time shifts from her “present” situation to her early childhood memories, both presented “in the moment”. Later in Harlem I was in an apartment with Willie and in the next sentence I’m with her and her father “H” from previous generation in Pratt City. Stories within stories ending in jumps to another story in another time and place. But it’s not the time-shifts that are distracting, it the overuse of metaphors. There are paragraphs of them. I started seeing them multiply along with the expanding generation-tree. As Gyasi herself writes “The family is like the forest: if you are outside it is dense; if you are inside you see that each tree has its own position.”. I could forgive the grating metaphors. However the book failed to grab me. Especially in the early slave scenes where descriptions didn’t capture the period or place adequately. Early descriptions such as that of life in the British slave dungeon lacked substance and I remained outside, never feeling that the events were real though knowing they were. A mediocre novel, adequately written, worth the effort if you have the time and don’t mind a mountain of metaphors. This debut novel traces the legacy of the emotional and economic damage slavery inflicted on eight generations of one African family from the Gold Coast over the course of 250 years. Gyasi, whose second novel, Transcendent Kingdom, I previously reviewed, brings readers a glimpse of the horrors of the institution of slavery in an intimate way as members of successive generations tell their tales of loss and survival on both sides of the Atlantic. The characters are the descendants of two sisters, Effia the Beauty, who is married off to a wealthy Englishman on the Gold Coast, and Esi, who is sold into slavery and crosses to America. While the stories serve as interesting vignettes that touch on major historical events in the Gold Coast (later Ghana) and the United States—Civil War, Reconstruction, the Great Migrations, the mass incarceration of Black men—while tackling some more personal trials—children ripped from parents by the slave trade, heroin addiction, chain gangs—I found myself wanting more of each of those stories, a little more of a link between one family member’s story and another’s. The jump was often abrupt. Nevertheless, an excellent read. Homegoing is the story of two branches of a family tree with one sister being sold into slavery and taken to America and the other sister remaining in Ghana. The narrative alternates between the two lines, with each chapter being the story of the next descendant. I found this a very effective structure for telling the multigenerational family story, although I did appreciate the family tree at the beginning of the book. I wasn't sure how the author was going to tie things up at the end and was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked. Although some sections were of necessity difficult reading, and I wish I knew more Ghanaian history, Homegoing was a wonderful story and a stunning debut novel. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
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Vertaling van: Homegoing. - New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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The novel opens with a family tree spanning seven generations starting with Maame, the mother of half-sisters Effia and Esi, and is perfect for keeping track of which side of the tree the descendants originate from.
Effia and Esi are born under different circumstances and destined to lead different lives, unaware of the other’s existence. Effia becomes the wife of white slave trader James Collins and lives in luxury at Cape Coast Castle. Fleeing her besieged village, Esi is captured, sold and held in the dungeons of the very same castle before being shipped to America.
Each chapter is a stand-alone novella, the whole a masterpiece in storytelling as the family history turns full circle through fire and water, war and division, America and Africa. From the barbarity and inhumanity of slavery in the deep south to no-holds-barred racism and discrimination in the north, from merciless missionaries in Kumasi to the poverty, rivalries and trading in the villages, Home Going doesn’t pull any punches yet still manages to provide hope.
Relevant, thought-provoking and highly recommended. A hit! ( )