Homegoing

In the corner of West Africa lies Ghana and the Gold Coast, and the history of hundred years of colonisation, slavery and tribal wars. A history of generations of Fante and Ashanti clans, of two sisters born of the same mother, separated by clans, continents and destinies. Their families meet but after a journey of seven generations. 

And this time again I learnt about a new culture, a new country and race - What they wear, what they say, how they live, what’s their culture. Their staple foods yams and fufu or their native language Twi. The gods from their folklore - Nyame, the Akan God - all-knowing and all-seeing, Asase Yaa and her children Bia and Tano or Anansi, the trickster.

Did you know these Ghanaian communities are matriarchal where the lineage follows the mothers side, how men have produce and gifts as a bride price, how men could still have many wives and fathered many children, barren women were unlucky, how white service men bought black wives to marry but called them wenches and fathered children. 

But that’s not all I took, I took a great story  running over 300 years as mothers and fathers pass their spirits to their children. One sister stayed and the other taken, one afraid of fire, another of water, one burnt and the other whipped. One life of drudgery, another of slavery. For the first time I read about the evils of slavery, how millions of blacks were sold, ill treated and bullied into submission and bonded labor. The white and the blacks, and the blacks fighting the blacks. An outsider can’t break in if you are united and strong. But the division between fente and Asanti was used by the whites and who lost. And what about the millions displaced to America and then treated as animals and herded into a life of hard labor, indignity and danger. They still survive and the children move on fighting the battles of their own generation. The pain and the misery passed from parents to children to their grand children. The black stone with the golden lines stays and gets passed on. There are stories to a heirloom and the  ancestors pass the legends in our dreams. We are a residue of the lives lived by our ancestors. We go further to tell these stories and learning’s to our children. Hoping they have a better life and do better than us. Despite all the horrible things which are signs of pure evil in this world and how people continue to do so still with human trafficking, slavery and animal killing rampant across the world blatantly and shamelessly. Still there is hope that life will be better, it’s hope that we will be kinder and we will care enough to love. 

Definitely 5 stars to the book and the author. I would love to learn the authors own story, and what parts of it emerged in this story. What part of his emotions and past reflected in his story. But I did find the authors love for books and reading. 

There is a peek into the authors love for books with mentions of Them lord of flies’, Middlemarch. So it was good to associate with the author and know the person a bit better.