Book Discussion Group Meeting, Saturday, December 1, 2018, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Introducing Yaa Gyasi

Yaa Gyasi was born in Mapong, Ghana, in 1989. When she was two years old, her family moved to the US so that her father could get his PhD from Ohio State. The family moved several times before settling in Huntsville, Alabama, where Gyasi lived from age 9 through high school graduation. She received a BA from Stanford and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Homegoing is Gyasi's first novel and it received much pre-publication publicity based on the seven-figure advance offer Knopf made to Gyasi. In the video below, Yaa Gyasi talks about Homegoing with PBS Books.

In Ghana

There was indeed a Cape Coast Castle, and it still stands. In the video below, the Obama family takes a tour of the castle.



There was also a Golden Stool of the Asante, and it was indeed the cause of a war between the British. As we learned in the book, the Asante lost that war, but I was delighted to learn that even then, the Asante were allowed to preserve the stool free of interference from the colonial British, which was refreshing given the record of the British on looting precious artifacts. No one has ever sat on the Golden Stool. It rests on a blanket on a chair, and during coronation ceremonies, the new king is held over the stool and not allowed to touch it.

In America

Yaa Gyasi said that when she was doing her research for the book, the one thing that came as a surprise to her was learning about the coal mines of Pratt, Alabama, and about how the convict leasing system was used to provide labor to the mines. The following picture is of one of the plants at the Pratt coal mine. If you look at the raised platform at the lower left of the picture, you can see a mule pulling a tram car with waste rock.