Heritage and Identity Theme Analysis

Homegoing’s premise explores African and African-American heritage and culture through a period of several centuries, as the book follows the descendants of Effia and Esi, two daughters of an Asante woman (from the Ashanti region of Ghana) named Maame. Each woman represents one of these two cultures, and how the disastrous consequences of European colonialism and American slavery changed and defined them. Effia marries a colonial British official named James Collins and stays on the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana); Esi is captured and sold into slavery in America. This chance difference between their fates leads to a stark contrast in the lives of six generations of their descendants. Over the book’s fourteen chapters, each of which focuses on a different descendant of these two women, Gyasi shows how cultural heritage is the crux of a person’s identity as each of the characters must grapple with their place inside the culture of their parents and the society around them.

Effia and James Collins’ descendants largely remain on the Gold Coast, but their mixed heritage causes many generations to be haunted by European culture and colonization as they try to remain true to their African cultural heritage. Quey, Effia and James Collins’ son, struggles with the fact that he is biracial. Although Effia has taught him her native language, Quey is schooled in England, which makes him feel as though he lives between two worlds. He takes part in his father’s slave trading even though he does not approve of it because he wants to make his father proud, and he wants to be seen as strong. However, this leads to an identity crisis for many of his family members. James, Quey’s son, has the opposite path. He rejects the work of his father and grandfather and aims to reclaim his African cultural heritage by faking his death in a battle and going to live in a different village that does not participate in the slave trade. Thus, his desire to stay true to his African heritage defines his morality and his identity. James’s descendants continue to work to maintain their independence from the British because they feel it is necessary to reject that part of their history. James’s granddaughter, Akua, is plagued by this legacy to the point that she tries to kill her own children by setting her hut on fire in madness. This act then leads her son and his daughter, Yaw and Marjorie, to move to the United States in an attempt to escape this rigid cycle of guilt. Yet in the United States, Marjorie sees how her blackness is defined very differently because she does not have the same cultural inheritance of African-Americans who have lived in America for generations. When she returns to Ghana at the end of the novel, she feels at home again because doesn’t have to define herself against the African-American experience or white experience. Being back in Ghana makes her feel at ease because the culture is so integral to her sense of identity.

Esi’s family in America is also haunted by the effects of colonialism when she is shipped to America. However, instead of trying to regain their African culture, they are forced to forge a new kind of cultural heritage because so much of it has been taken away due to slavery. Esi, who is sent on a slave ship to Alabama, begins a cycle in which many of her descendants are ripped away from their parents and lose any connection to their heritage. This is symbolized by Esi’s loss of the black stone that her mother gave her. Esi’s daughter, Ness, then starts to lose her mother’s language. By the time Ness has her own child, Kojo, his family history is all but lost because his parents send him away with another woman to try and escape slavery when he is a baby. Kojo’s son, known only as H, becomes even more removed from his culture, as Kojo’s wife is kidnapped and re-enslaved when she is pregnant with H, and he never knows his father. At this point in the novel, a shift starts to happen: when H’s daughter Willie moves to Harlem, she begins to see how black people in America are creating their own communities and new forms of culture through jazz and art. This culture is created less from a shared African heritage and more by a shared heritage of being black in the United States. When the novel reaches Willie’s grandson, Marcus, he is deeply rooted in America and invested in learning about his own history when he pursues higher education at Stanford. However, even though his deepest roots lie in Ghana, he knows that he is as much a product of American institutions: the slave trade, sharecropping, the convict-leasing system that had ruined H’s life. He sees through his studies how this collective cultural struggle has shaped his identity and the identity of those around him.

Ultimately, Homegoing examines the many differences between the two branches of a single family tree. Even though Effia and Esi come from the same background, the differences in how their heritage has been shaped comes to define them and their descendants. While one side of the family attempts to separate itself from European culture, the other is forced to confront a lack of heritage and forge a new culture of its own. Yet, in reuniting Marcus and Marjorie (the last descendants of each branch) in Ghana at the end of the book, Gyasi provides a bit of hope for some kind of future union between African and African-American heritage. Even if their experiences have differed greatly, Marcus and Marjorie recognize that they do have an intertwined history and a shared foundation.