“That’s not the point,” he said.
“What is the point, Marcus?”
She stopped walking. For all they knew, they were standing on top of what used to be a coal mine, a grave for all the black convicts who had been conscripted to work there. It was one thing to research something, another thing entirely to have lived it. To have felt it. How could he explain to Marjorie that what he wanted to capture with his project was the feeling of time, of having been a part of something that stretched so far back, was so impossibly large, that it was easy to forget that she, and he, and everyone else, existed in it—not apart from it, but inside of it.
How could he explain to Marjorie that he wasn’t supposed to be here? Alive. Free. That the fact that he had been born, that he wasn’t in a jail cell somewhere, was not by dint of his pulling himself up by the bootstraps, not by hard work or belief in the American Dream, but by mere chance. He had only heard tell of his great-grandpa H from Ma Willie, but those stories were enough to make him weep and to fill him with pride. Two-Shovel H they had called him. But what had they called his father or his father before him? What of the mothers? They had been products of their time, and walking in Birmingham now, Marcus was an accumulation of these times. That was the point.
Instead of saying any of this, he said, “You know why I’m scared of the ocean?”
She shook her head.
“It’s not just because I’m scared of drowning. Though I guess I am. It’s because of all that space. It’s because everywhere I look, I see blue, and I have no idea where it begins. When I’m out there, I stay as close as I can to the sand, because at least then I know where it ends.”
She didn’t speak for a while, just continued walking a little bit ahead of him. Maybe she was thinking about fire, the thing she had told him she most feared. Marcus had never seen so much as a picture of her father, but he imagined that he had been a fearsome man with a scar covering one whole side of his face. He imagined that Marjorie feared fire for the same reasons he feared water.
She stopped beneath a broken lamppost that flickered an eerie light on and off and on and off. “I bet you would like the beach in Cape Coast,” she said. “It’s beautiful there. Not like anything you would see in America.”
Marcus laughed. “I don’t think anyone in my family’s ever left the country. I wouldn’t know what to do on a plane ride that long.”
“You mostly just sleep,” she said.
He couldn’t wait to get out of Birmingham. Pratt City was long gone, and he wasn’t going to find what he was looking for in the ruins of that place. He didn’t know if he would ever find it.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
*
“Ess-cuse me, sah! You want go see slave castle? I take you see Cape Coast Castle. Ten cedis, sah. Juss ten cedis. I take you see nice castle.”
Marjorie was rushing him through the tro-tro stop, hurrying them toward a cab that would take them to their beach resort. Days before, they had been in Edweso, paying respects to her father’s birthplace. Only hours before, they’d been in Takoradi, doing the same for her mother’s.
Everything was brilliant here, even the ground. Everywhere they went, Marcus would notice sparkling red dust. It coated his body by the end of every night. Now there would be sand to join it.
“Don’t mind them,” Marjorie said, moving Marcus past the group of young boys and girls who were trying to draw him toward them to buy this or that, take him here or there.
He stopped Marjorie. “You ever seen it? The Castle?”
They were in the middle of a busy street, and cars were blaring their horns, though it could have been at anyone—the many thin girls with buckets on their heads, the boys selling newspapers, the whole, entire country with skin like his, hustling about, making driving near impossible. Still, they found a way to pass.
Marjorie clutched at her backpack straps, pulled them away from her body. “No, actually. I’ve never been. That’s what the black tourists do when they come here.” He lifted an eyebrow at her. “You know what I mean,” she said.
“Well, I’m black. And I’m a tourist.”
Marjorie sighed and checked her watch, though they had nowhere they needed to go. They had come for the beach, and they had all week to see it. “Okay, fine. I’ll take you.”
They took a cab to their resort to set down their things. From the balcony, Marcus caught his first real glimpse of the beach. It seemed to stretch for miles and miles. Sunlight bounced off of the sand, making it shimmer. Sand like diamonds in the once gold coast.
There was almost no one milling around the Castle that day, save for a few women who were gathered around a very old tree, eating nuts and plaiting each other’s hair. They looked at Marcus and Marjorie as the two of them walked up, but they didn’t move. Marcus started to wonder if he was really seeing them in the flesh. If ever there was a place to believe was haunted, this was it. From the outside, the Castle was a glowing white. Powder white, like the entire thing had been scrubbed down to gleaming, cleansed of any stains. Marcus wondered who made it shine like that, and why. When they entered, things started to look dingier. The dirty skeleton of a long-past shame that held the place together began to show itself in blackening concrete, rusty-hinged doors. Soon a man so skinny and tall he looked like he was made from stretched rubber bands greeted them and the four others who had signed up for the tour.
He said something to Marjorie in Fante, and she spoke back in the halting, apologetic Twi she had been speaking all week.
As they walked toward the long row of cannons that looked out at the sea, Marcus stopped her. “What did he say?” he whispered.
“He knew my grandmother. He wished me akwaaba.”
It was one of the few words Marcus had learned in his time here. “Welcome.” Marjorie’s family, strangers on the street, even the man who had checked them in at the airport, had been saying it to her their entire stay. They had been saying it to him too.
“This is where the church was,” the rubber band man said, pointing. “It stands directly above the dungeons. You could walk around this upper level, go into that church, and never know what was going on underneath. In fact, many of the British soldiers married local women, and their children, along with other local children, would go to school right here in this upper level. Other children would be sent to England for school and they would come back to form an elite class.”
Next to him, Marjorie shifted her weight, and Marcus tried not to look at her. It was the way most people lived their lives, on upper levels, not stopping to peer underneath.
And soon they were headed down. Down into the belly of this large, beached beast. Here, there was grime that could not be washed away. Green and gray and black and brown and dark, so dark. There were no windows. There was no air.
“This is one of the female dungeons,” the guide said finally, leading them into a room that still smelled, faintly. “They kept as many as two hundred and fifty women here for about three months at a time. From here they would lead them out this door.” He walked further.
The group left the dungeon and moved together toward the door. It was a wooden door painted black. Above it, there was a sign that read Door of No Return.
“This door leads out to the beach, where ships waited to take them away.”
Them. Them. Always them. No one called them by name. No one in the group spoke. They all stood still, waiting. For what, Marcus didn’t know. Suddenly, he felt sick to his stomach. He wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else.
He didn’t think. He just started to push at the door. He could hear the guide asking him to stop, yelling at Marjorie in Fante. He could hear Marjorie too. He could feel her arm on his hand, then he could feel his hand push through, then, finally, there was light.
Marcus started running onto the beach. Outside, there were hundreds of fishermen tending their bright turquoise nets. There were long handcrafted rowboats as far as the eye could see. Each boat had
a flag of no nationality, of every nationality. There was a purple polka-dotted one beside a British one, a blood-orange one beside a French one, a Ghanaian one next to an American one.
Marcus ran until he found two men with dark, gleaming, shoe-polish skin who were building a dazzling fire with flames that licked out and up, crawling toward the water. They were cooking fish on the fire, and when they saw him, they stopped, stared.
He could hear her feet behind him before he could see her. The sound of feet hitting sand, a light, muffled sound. She stopped many paces away from him, and when she spoke, her voice was a distant thing carried by sea-salted wind.
“What’s wrong?” Marjorie shouted. And he just kept staring out into the water. It went every direction that his eye could see. It splashed up toward his feet, threatening to put out the fire.
“Come here,” he said, finally turning to look at her. She glanced at the fire, and it was only then he remembered her fear. “Come,” he said again. “Come see.” She stepped a little bit closer, but stopped again when the fire roared into the sky.
“It’s okay,” he said, and he believed it. He held out his hand. “It’s okay.”
She walked to where he stood, where the fire met the water. He took her hand and they both looked out into the abyss of it. The fear that Marcus had felt inside the Castle was still there, but he knew it was like the fire, a wild thing that could still be controlled, contained.
Then Marjorie released his hand. He watched her run, headlong, into the crashing waves of the water, watched her dip under until he lost her and all he could do was wait for her to resurface. When she did, she looked at him, her arms moving circles around her, and though she didn’t speak, he knew what she was saying. It was his turn to come to her.
He closed his eyes and walked in until the water met his calves, and then he held his breath, started to run. Run underwater. Soon, waves crashed over his head and all around him. Water moved into his nose and stung his eyes. When he finally lifted his head up from the sea to cough, then breathe, he looked out at all the water before him, at the vast expanse of time and space. He could hear Marjorie laughing, and soon, he laughed too. When he finally reached her, she was moving just enough to keep her head above water. The black stone necklace rested just below her collarbone and Marcus watched the glints of gold come off it, shining in the sun.
“Here,” Marjorie said. “Have it.” She lifted the stone from her neck, and placed it around Marcus’s. “Welcome home.”
He felt the stone hit his chest, hard and hot, before finding its way up to the surface again. He touched it, surprised by its weight.
Marjorie splashed him suddenly, laughing loudly before swimming away, toward the shore.
Acknowledgments
I am incredibly grateful to Stanford University’s Chappell-Lougee Fellowship, the Merage Foundation for the American Dream Fellowship, the University of Iowa’s Dean’s Graduate Research Fellowship, and the Whited Fellowship for supporting this work over the last seven years.
Many, many thanks to my agent, Eric Simonoff, for being so sure and so wise, a fierce advocate for this novel. I am also grateful for the rest of the wonderful team at WME, especially Raffaella De Angelis, Annemarie Blumenhagen, and Cathryn Summerhayes for so brilliantly representing me to the rest of the world.
Enormous thanks to my editor, Jordan Pavlin, for her encouragement and graceful editing, her steadfast belief in this novel, and for taking such great care. Thanks also to everyone at Knopf for their boundless enthusiasm. Another thanks goes to Mary Mount and everyone at Viking UK.
For the bedrock of friendship: Tina Kim, Allison Dill, Raina Sun, Becca Richardson, Bethany Woolman, Tabatha Robinson, and Faradia Pierre.
Thank you to Christina Ho, first reader and beloved friend, for seeing this novel in every messy iteration and for assuring me, at each turn, that it was worth pushing forward.
It was such a privilege to spend two years at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Thank you Deb West, Jan Zenisek, and Connie Brothers. Thanks also to my classmates there, especially to the ones who gave advice, encouragement, and a home-cooked meal, sometimes all in the same night: Nana Nkweti, Clare Jones, Alexia Arthurs, Jorge Guerra, Naomi Jackson, Stephen Narain, Carmen Machado, Olivia Dunn, Liz Weiss, and Aamina Ahmad.
I have had the extraordinary good fortune of having teachers who made me feel, even when I was just a child, that my dream of becoming a writer was not only possible, but a foregone conclusion. I cannot say thank you enough for that early support, but I will continue to try. In Alabama: Amy Langford and Janice Vaughn. At Stanford: Josh Tyree, Molly Antopol, Donna Hunter, Elizabeth Tallent, and Peggy Phelan. At Iowa: Julie Orringer, Ayana Mathis, Wells Tower, Marilynne Robinson, Daniel Orozco, and Sam Chang. I must say another thank-you to Sam Chang for believing in this book from the very first word, for making sure I had everything I needed in order to work, and for that phone call in 2012.
Thank you to Hannah Nelson-Teutsch, Jon Amar, Patrice Nelson, and, in loving memory, Clifford Teutsch for their support and warm welcome.
I owe so much to my parents, Kwaku and Sophia Gyasi, who, like so many immigrants, are the very definition of hard work and sacrifice. Thank you for cutting a path so that it might be easier for us to walk. Thank you to my brothers, Kofi and Kwabena, for walking with me.
Another special thank-you to my father and Kofi for fielding countless research questions. In addition to their helpful answers and suggestions, some of the books and articles I consulted were: The Door of No Return by William St. Clair, Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee by Thomas Edward Bowdich, The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade by Rebecca Shumway, The Human Tradition in the Black Atlantic, 1500–2000 edited by Beatriz G. Mamigonian and Karen Racine, A Handbook on Asante Culture by Osei Kwadwo, Spirituality, Gender, and Power in Asante History by Emmanuel Akyeampong and Pashington Obeng, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama 1865–1900 by Mary Ellen Curtin, “From Alabama’s Past, Capitalism Teamed with Racism to Create Cruel Partnership” by Douglas A. Blackmon, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South by Alex Lichtenstein, “Two Industrial Towns: Pratt City and Thomas” from the Birmingham Historical Society, Yaa Asantewaa and the Asante-British War of 1900–1 by A. Adu Boahen, and Smack: Heroin and the American City by Eric C. Schneider.
Finally, most urgently, thank you to Matthew Nelson-Teutsch, best reader and dearest heart, who brought to each reading of this novel all of the generosity, intelligence, goodness, and love that he brings to my days. We, this novel and I, are better for it.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yaa Gyasi was born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. She holds a BA in English from Stanford University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a Dean’s Graduate Research Fellowship. She lives in Berkeley, California.
An Alfred A. Knopf Reading Group Guide
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
The introduction, author biography, discussion questions, and suggested reading that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Homegoing, the stunning debut novel by Yaa Gyasi.
Discussion Questions
1. Evaluate the title of the book. Why do you think that the author chose the word Homegoing? What is a homegoing and where does it appear in the novel? In addition to the term’s literal meaning, discuss what symbolic meanings or associations the title might have in terms of a connection with our place of birth, our ancestors, our heritage, and our personal and cultural histories.
2. Explore the theme of belief. What forms of belief are depicted in the book and what purpose do these beliefs seem to serve for the characters? Does the author reveal what has shaped the characters’ beliefs? Do these beliefs seem to have a mostly positive or negative impact on the believer and those around them?
3. What perspective does the book offer on the subject of beliefs and otherness? For instance, does the book delineate between superstition and
belief? Why does Ma Aku reprimand Jo after he is kicked out of church? What do the Missionary and the fetish man contribute to a dialogue on beliefs and otherness? Does the book ultimately suggest the best way to confront beliefs that are foreign to us?
4. Evaluate the treatment and role of women in the novel. What role does marriage play within the cultures represented in the novel and how are the women treated as a result? Likewise, what significance does fertility and motherhood have for the women and how does it influence their treatment? In the chapter entitled “Effia,” what does Adwoa tell Effia that her coupling with James is really about? In its depiction of the collective experiences of the female characters, what does the book seem to reveal about womanhood? How different would you say the treatment and role of women is today? Discuss.
5. Analyze the structure of the book. Why do you think the author assigned a chapter to each of the major characters? What points of view are represented therein? Does any single point of view seem to stand out among the rest or do you believe that the author presented a balanced point of view? Explain. Although each chapter is distinct, what do the stories have in common when considered collectively? How might your interpretation of the book differ if the author had chosen to tell the story from a single point of view?
6. Consider the setting of the book. What time periods are represented and what places are adopted as settings? Why do you think that the author chose these particular settings? What subjects and themes are illuminated via these particular choices? How does the extensive scope of the book help to unify these themes and create a cohesive treatment of the subjects therein?