Homegoing (Gyasi) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
The novel is work, requiring readers' full attention to follow the connections and lineage between characters while also absorbing details and present-day consequences of historical happenings that are unimaginable. In reward for this effort, Yaa Gasi got in my head, pushing me to further examine my lens and perspective.… Indeed we must. Homegoing captured me and I highly recommend it.
Abby Fabiaschi, AUTHOR - LitLovers  READ MORE…

Remarkable...compelling. The novel...provides deep background for today’s controversies over racial justice...and is highly readable. In other words, Homegoing enters a ready and waiting reading world, and it is built to satisfy.... [T]his powerful novel in particular, can reveal the large and small significances of history, while also delivering the pleasures of story.
Rebecca Steinitz - Boston Globe


Tracing three centuries in Ghana, and the wildly different experiences—prosperity, poverty, comfort, captivity—of two half-sisters and their descendants in Ghana and the U.S., Yaa Gyasi's debut novel promises to be a memorable epic of changing families and changing nations.
Laura Pearson - Chicago Tribune


Heart-wrenching.... Gyasi’s unsentimental prose, her vibrant characters and her rich settings keep the pages turning no matter how mournful the plot.... The chapters change narrators effortlessly and smoothly transition between time periods.... Yaa Gyasi’s assured Homegoing is a panorama of splendid faces.
Soniah Kamal - Atlanta Journal-Constitution


The brilliance of this structure, in which we know more than the characters do about the fate of their parents and children, pays homage to the vast scope of slavery without losing sight of its private devastation.... [Toni Morrison’s] influence is palpable in Gyasi’s historicity and lyricism.... No novel has better illustrated the way in which racism became institutionalized in this country.
Megan O’Grady - Vogue


Homegoing is an epic novel in every sense of the word—spanning three centuries, Homegoing is a sweeping account of two half-sisters in 18th-century Ghana and the lives of their many generations of descendants in America. A stunning, unforgettable account of family, history, and racism, Homegoing is an ambitious work that lives up to the hype.
Jarry Lee - Buzzfeed


Stunning... [Homegoing] may just be one of the richest, most rewarding reads of 2016. (“19 Summer Books That Everyone Will Be Talking About")
Meredith Turits - Elle


Gyasi gives voice, and an empathetic ear, to the ensuing seven generations of flawed and deeply human descendants, creating a patchwork mastery of historical fiction.
Cotton Codinha - Elle Magazine


[A] commanding debut...will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading. When people talk about all the things fiction can teach its readers, they’re talking about books like this.
Steph Opitz - Marie Claire


(Starred review.) Gyasi’s amazing debut offers an unforgettable, page-turning look at the histories of Ghana and America... [where] prosperity rises and falls from parent to child, love comes and goes....Gyasi writes...with remarkable freshness and subtlety. A marvelous novel.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Gyasi's characters are vividly drawn, sympathetic yet not simplistically heroic... This is an amazing first novel, remarkable in its epic vision. —Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Library Journal


Rarely does a grand, sweeping epic plumb interior lives so thoroughly. Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing is a marvel. —Dave Wheeler, associate editor
Shelf Awareness


Gyasi is a deeply empathetic writer, and each of the novel’s 14 chapters is a savvy character portrait that reveals the impact of racism from multiple perspectives.... A promising debut that’s awake to emotional, political, and cultural tensions across time and continents.
Kirkus Reviews