Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Hello my lovely readers!

Reading the synopsis of this book, I had to read it right away. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.

MY THOUGHTS 
I thought this book was lovely. Each of the characters evoked such strong emotional reactions from me because of the plight of their lives and how well-written they were.

Gyasi is an amazing writer and my only critique is that I wished we got MORE from each character. This book could've had an additional 200 pages and I wouldn't complain!

This would've been a five-star read for me but toward the end of the book when Marjorie talks about being "akata," it really put a sour taste in my mouth, given the complicated and offensive history that word has toward Black Americans. I really wish Gyasi would've explored this word MORE and had a more nuanced discussion on why the word "akata" is derogatory to Black Americans from Africans. 

I think that's what I wanted from Gyasi....more, more, more.