Author
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Yaa Gyasi
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FROM Yaa Gyasi
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
The difference between being African in America and African-American The novel “Homegoing” starts with the slave trade in colonial Ghana, and traces that trauma through generations of Africans and African Americans.
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
Yaa Gyasi's 'Homegoing' What’s the difference between being African in America and African American? Is there a difference? Novelist Yaa Gyasi tackles those questions and more in her new novel “Homegoing.” It follows two lines of the same family, beginning with two sisters on the west coast of Africa in the 1700s. One marries a white British slave trader and stays in Africa. The other is sold into slavery by a rival African tribe and ends up in America. Each subsequent chapter is told from the point of view of their descendents, switching from the African side to the American side of the family and unfolding down the family tree to the present day. The book explores how that the slave trade haunts each generation on both continents.
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