Review of
Instaread Summary of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Three out of five stars
The institution
of the slave trade from Africa to the Americas is both simple and extremely
complex. It is simple because it was based solely on economics. As the
Europeans colonized North America, there was a chronic labor shortage and the
cheapest way to do this was to import enslaved Africans. In Africa, a tribe
could engage in a raid on another tribe and capture people to be sold to the
British as slaves. This was very profitable for the tribe that engaged in the
raid, but it destroyed the social structure.
Slavery and its aftermath is also very complex because
it pitted African tribe against tribe, with the British colonial administration
controlling it. Free black persons lived within the structure of the slave
trade, no doubt witnessing the plight of people in chains being loaded on ships
for transport. The aftermath of slavery led to explicit and implicit
segregation that exists a century and a half after slavery was violently ended.
This is a work
of fiction and very complex. After reading the section summarizing the book I
had the feeling that a fast talking auctioneer had delivered the explanation. A
lot is packed into the summary, if you read it at your normal reading pace you
likely will emerge uncertain as to the characters, but not about the point of
the book. It is an attempt to
encapsulate most aspects of the slave trade into one book of fiction, a goal
almost impossible to achieve.
There are also
many characters in the novel, as it spans many generations. The most obvious
conclusion from reading the summary is that the author of the novel simply
tries to do too much in one book.
This book was made available for free for review
purposes.
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