Homegoing: Part 1: Kojo Summary & Analysis

Someone has robbed the boat that Jo is working on, which means that the police will come searching the boat and asking the ship workers about it. Jo has been working on ships in Fell’s Point for two years and has never caused any trouble, but he is still jumpy around the police.

Jo asks his friend, Poot, to cover for him, and Jo jumps off the boat. As he looks at the Chesapeake Bay, he’s reminded how much he loves the boats, even if Ma Aku always says that there’s something evil about him and other freed slaves working on the things that had brought them to America in the first place.

Jo walks down the street, knowing that he should go help his pregnant wife, Anna, at her cleaning job. But he takes a moment to appreciate Baltimore and his freedom in it. Jo had only known the South from the stories Ma Aku told, and he couldn’t miss what he didn’t know.

Jo then swings by the Mathison house, where Anna and Ma Aku are cleaning. He buys a flower for his wife on the way. She greets him at the door and he kisses her, rubbing her stomach. When he was seven, Jo had asked Ma Aku what to do when you like a girl. (Jo was in love with a girl named Mirabel at this time.) Ma Aku said that in the Gold Coast, a boy would go to the girl's father with an offering. So, the next Sunday, Jo brought Mirabel’s father a frog he’d caught. This made Ma Aku laugh so hard that pastor said Ma Aku was teaching Jo witchcraft, and he kicked Ma Aku and Jo out of the church.

When Jo had seen Anna for the first time, walking on the street, he had been mesmerized by her body. He had gone up to her and asked if he could walk with her, and they had walked the whole length of Baltimore together.

The house that Anna and Ma Aku are cleaning belongs to an old white family, and it had once been a stop on the Underground Railroad. It is two stories and has ten rooms, which takes several hours to clean. As Jo cleans, he can hear Mr. Mathison and other abolitionists talking in the drawing room. They’re saying that they need to make sure there are more emancipated slaves in Baltimore.

When Jo had first heard them speak this way years prior, he had been heartened by their words. But as the years went on, he knew that these people could only do so much.

Jo, Anna, and Ma Aku return to their apartment. Inside, their seven kids are playing. Each child’s name starts with a different letter of the alphabet, A through G, and so Anna has lovingly started referring to the new baby as H, as a placeholder name.

Jo strives to be a good father, because he knows that his father never got the chance. He gets to know his children well and promises Anna that he will always be there for her.

Jo and Anna get all of the kids to sleep. As Anna undresses, Jo tells her that the police had come by the boat that day. Anna asks if it scared him; he tells her nothing scares him. They kiss and begin to make love, their room separated by a curtain. He thinks about how much he loves holding her.

The next morning, Jo goes back to work. Poot tells him that the police asked the usual questions, but they think they found the man who robbed the boat. Poot had been born free, and had worked on ships his whole life. Jo had come up under Poot, and knew everything there was to know about ships because of it. Once, Poot had even saved his job, putting out a fire that Jo had started, which threatened to take down the entire boat.

Towards the end of the day, Jo sees Anna on the dock, which is odd because he usually finishes his work day before she does. She tells him that Mr. Mathison is asking for him to come to the house immediately. At the house, Mr. Mathison greets him and Anna, calling him by his full name, Kojo.

Mr. Mathison tells Jo that there’s a new law being drafted by the South that would require law enforcement to arrest any runaway slave in the North and send them back, no matter how long ago they escaped. Mr. Mathison says that he is concerned for Jo and Ma Aku. He suggests that they move farther north, to New York or Canada.

Later that night, Jo explains what Mr. Mathison said. He knows that Ma Aku would never leave Baltimore, and Anna is too pregnant to move. He decides to keep his family there, even though he worries for himself and his family.

The next day, Jo asks Poot if he would leave Baltimore. Poot says no, claiming that Baltimore is a great city to be a black man in: there are black porters and teachers, and builders, and a person doesn’t have to be a servant. Most other people stay in Baltimore as well, tired of running.

Baby H continues to grow. Jo’s oldest daughter, Agnes, gets a cleaning job at the Methodist church. Two weeks later, the pastor’s son Timmy comes by the docks to ask Jo for Agnes’s hand in marriage.

Jo had been to church only once since the day he and Ma Aku were kicked out for witchcraft—the day of his own wedding. They day they were kicked out, he had cried because the pastor had said they were practicing “African witchcraft,” and it was the first time he had felt shame. Ma Aku had grown angry with him, saying that the people in the church had simply chosen the white man’s god, but that that is not the only option. The people in the church think witches are bad, she explained, because white people had said so. Jo had stopped crying.

Jo agrees to let Timmy marry Agnes. They marry the next month, the morning the Fugitive Slave Act passes. Just as the ceremony finishes, a little boy runs by the door shouting that the law has passed. A few people squirm in their seats and one person leaves. A collective sense of fear starts to grow.

Within a few weeks, people start to move up to Canada by the hundreds. Mathison tells Jo to always carry his free papers. In the mornings, Jo makes the children practice showing their free papers to law enforcement officials. The children laugh about this at first, and Jo grows more afraid. Anna, who is due any day, tells Jo that he is worrying too much; no one is looking for them.

Then one day, Anna doesn’t come home. Jo asks Ma Aku where she is, and she says that Anna was going to pick up sardines before coming home. Jo looks for her all over town. He knocks on Mr. Mathison’s door, who says that he will start looking for her.

Timmy draws a picture of Anna, and the next day Jo carries it around with him, asking everyone he meets if they have seen her, but no one has. He grows more and more frantic, desperately asking a white woman on the street if she has seen Anna. An officer then comes up to him, grabbing him away from the woman. Jo says that his wife is missing, showing him the picture. The officer snatches the picture from him and asks to take it. Jo says it’s the only one he has, and the officer tears it up.

The officer asks if he’s a runaway. Jo starts to shake, and says that he was born free in Baltimore. The officer tells him to go home, and Jo sits on the ground, trembling.

Mr. Mathison finds a boy who says he saw a white man take a pregnant woman into his carriage. Jo assumes that they sold her. Mathison says that they don’t know that, but his voice seems unsure. Back at home, Ma Aku tells Jo that he’ll make it through this.

Jo crawls into bed with Ma Aku, resting his head on her as he had done when he was a boy, crying for Sam and Ness. Even then, Jo had seen that he would never truly know who his people were. When he felt this way, Ma Aku would tell him stories about the people on the Gold Coast.

Ten years pass. Ma Aku dies, Agnes has three children, and the other kids have since married or moved out. Jo is still depressed, seeing Anna everywhere. He goes to New York, unable to look at a boat. One December day, he goes to his usual bar. A man next to him says that South Carolina seceded that morning and that war is coming. Jo had been hearing of war for years, and so the man’s words don’t matter to him much.