This follows the generational narrative of Roots, and the book has a handy family tree to refer to throughout your reading. The book builds on Roots concept by having two family trees through two half sisters. Unknown to each other the sisters families branch on one side to the US whilst the other branch stays in Africa.
This is obviously reflected in Yaa Gyashi’s experiences being born in Ghana and raised in Alabama.
The book had the usual tales of slavery. It didn’t hide from the fact that the tribes in the Gold Coast played a part in procuring and trading African lives to the Europeans.
Each chapter is like a vignette. They focus on the relationships/circumstances that result in the next member of the family tree.
This does mean some chapters are better than others. Chapters that stood out to me include the chapter where in an African village a man takes as his lover his long time love, despite that he is married. He promises her he will take her as his second wife as soon as he has a good harvest. Until one year he returns from market with some cocoa beans. This leads to a bumper harvest – but now he can afford a good bride. She leaves her village pregnant to throw herself on the mercy of the missionaries.
The best stories are interweaved with the ones that go before. Love is a major theme. In a moving chapter two slaves forced together, yet find true love. Another theme is history, and especially forgetting history. Without knowing one’s family tree how can you know where you came from.
I was very moved by one chapter in which a baby who was sent on the underground railroad creates for himself his own large family. I really felt for his loss in this chapter.
I really enjoyed the book. It was easy to read, and each chapter was self contained. You could put it down and use the family tree to re-orientate yourself in the novel next time you picked it up.
If I do have a bad word to say, it’s that I felt very underwhelmed by the ending. I felt the continuation of a theme of fear of water, presumably due to slave ships and all the black bodies thrown over board, to be rather clunky. The stone necklace, the weight of history, is a rather subtler metaphor. Did the novel need both?
The final American character is the son of two heroin addicts yet we find him at University and he just happens to meet the last African character. She takes him to Africa and says “Welcome Home”.