116 pages • 3 hours read
Yaa GyasiHomegoing
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1
Chapter 1 Summary: “Effia”
In the early 1760s in Ghana, Effia Otcher is born in Fanteland on a night when fire rages outside her father’s compound. The fire spreads all the way to an Asante village in a matter of days. She is left by her father, Cobbe Otcher, with his first wife, Baaba, so he can survey the damage to his yams. Seven yams are lost, and Cobbe knows the loss will haunt his family for generations. Baaba and Cobbe agree never to speak of what happened that day, but the villagers are certain that “the baby was born of the fire” and is cursed (3). Cobbe commands Baaba to love the baby.
Baaba gives birth to Fiifi when Effia is three years old. Effia accidentally drops him one day while playing, and while he is unhurt, Baaba beats Effia with a cooking spoon that burns her flesh. Cobbe then fights with Baaba into the night. A cycle of violence begins, with Baaba beating Effia, and Cobbe beating Baaba, where “for each scar on Effia’s body, there was a companion scar on Baaba’s” (5). As Effia matures she gets more beautiful and attracts multiple suitors with gifts to their home. In 1775, a British soldier asks to marry one of the village girls, offering goods in exchange for the marriage. Cobbe explains to Effia that he does not wish for her to marry a White man; instead, he wants her to marry a man in the village. Effia hopes for Abeeku Badu, who refers to her as “Effia the Beauty” (9); he has made recent visits and is next in line for village chief.
Abeeku visits the family, and Effia learns that her village is in a trade agreement with the British that he would continue as chief. He is interested in her but must wait until she begins menstruation. That evening, Baaba tells Effia she must tell only her when her bleeding begins. In the meantime, Abeeku marries two women, a village woman and Millicent, a half-caste daughter of a Fante woman and a British soldier. Millicent visits Effia and Baaba frequently, giving them insight into life with the British men in the Cape Coast Castle. Soon Effia starts menstruating and tells Baaba, but she keeps it a secret after Baaba threatens her.
Abeeku becomes chief after the old chief dies, but Effia remains unmarried. Abeeku begins to plan “something big,” and after Effia questions Fiifi, she learns that their village will help the Asantes with their slave trade to the British. Baaba, who has been secretly planning to arrange a marriage between Effia and a British man, sees her opportunity one evening when the British are visiting Abeeku: She brings Effia with her into the compound. Effia catches the eye of James Collins, a British officer, who later returns to ask Baaba for Effie’s hand in marriage. Cobbe is enraged, but the British officer offered “more than had been offered for any other Fante woman in this village or the next” (15). Cobbe agrees, and they convince Abeeku to accept the marriage as well, claiming Effia is cursed since she has not yet menstruated and that the marriage will benefit their trade with the British. Cobbe weeps while Baaba gives Effia a black stone pendant “that shimmered as though it had been coated in gold dust” (16), telling her it was Effia’s mother’s. To Effia, Baaba seems relieved.
Effia and James are married at Cape Coast Castle without her family in attendance. James tries to make things comfortable for her and gives her a tour of the castle. When she realizes there are enslaved people imprisoned below as “cargo,” she panics, but James convinces her it is better to stay with him than go home. They reach James’s quarters at the top of the castle, where they awkwardly consummate the marriage, but over time they settle into a routine and she begins to find comfort in his devotion to her. He has the black stone from Effia’s mother put on a string so she can wear it.
She laments losing the status she would have had as a chief’s wife and contemplates her relationship with James, who “had started to mean more to her than a husband was supposed to mean to a wife” (19). James is also married to an Englishwoman named Anne, with whom he has two children but rarely sees. Effia becomes concerned when she has not yet conceived a child. Adwoa offers her sexual advice and roots to help with fertility. Effia puts the roots under the bed, and James notices them and scolds her, saying “I don’t want any voodoo or black magic in this place” (23). Later, the Fante wives of the British men are chatting and one of the women mention the slaves in the Castle dungeon; Effia realizes they all must look like her to James.
Effia becomes pregnant, and James is thrilled, but she receives word that Cobbe is on his deathbed. When she travels to her village, Fiifi informs her that he sent for her and reveals to Effia that her biological mother was a house girl whom Cobbe had raped, and who ran away into the fire the night she was born. When Cobbe dies, Effia feels like his unrest transfers to her. Baaba tells her she is “nothing from nowhere,” asking her “What can grow from nothing?” (27).
Chapter 2 Summary: “Esi”
As chapter two opens, 15-year-old Esi has been held captive in the women’s dungeon in the Cape Coast Castle for two weeks. Nearby, a woman named Afua is crying in the corner, unable to feed her baby because, without food, her milk has dried up. Esi recalls a year ago, when she was home in her father’s compound in the heart of Asanteland, being courted by the men of the village. A soldier enters the dungeon and takes Afua’s baby, slapping the woman when she cries. Esi asks her new friend Tansi for a story, and after they eat “the same mushy porridge” they have been offered for weeks (29), Tansi tells her the story of the kente cloth. In the story, two Asante men are hunting and encounter the mischievous spider Anansi, from whom they learn how to weave the kente cloth. After this, soldiers arrive with more women and pack them into the dungeon so tight they are stacked on top of each other. Esi feels the woman on top of her urinating.
Before she was a prisoner, Esi was the daughter of Kwame Asare and his third wife, Maame, and lived in an Asante village. Her life with her parents was happy, and she was beloved in her quickly growing village. When she is seven, her father earns the name Big Man after a battle that takes place after their village hears that a northern village obtained riches after raiding the British. They do not want to be seen as inferior, but Kwaku Agyei, a sensible villager, tries to discourage them from raiding this northern village, promoting instead a defensive approach. It comes down to “wisdom or strength” (32), and strength wins out, as the men prepare an attack. Esi overhears the plans and accidentally burns her mother while cooking. Her mother screams but advises Esi to think before acting, saying, “Be careful of fire. Know when to use it and when to stay cold” (33).
Esi’s father and the men attack and are captured, but Kwaku and a separate group of men come to their rescue, finding a gun cache and convincing the captors that there are more men waiting to attack. Esi’s father is humiliated and apologizes to Kwaku, saying he will never again “rush into a fight when it is possible to reason” (34), and he gets his name when Kwaku replies, “It takes a big man to admit his folly” (34). Big Man leads more than 55 wars, taking spoils and prisoners. With so many captives, Big Man convinces Maame to take a servant girl, which she had previously refused. Abronoma becomes their slave, but she is not good at serving, and Big Man insists she must be disciplined with a switch. Maame tries to spare her from Big Man’s discipline and agrees to do so herself; however, Big Man adds a caveat that Abronoma must be able to carry a bucket of water on her head without spilling it, or else he will beat her himself. Abronoma is put to the test, spilling two drops while setting down the bucket, and Big Man beats her.
Maame cares for Abronoma’s wounds in the aftermath, telling Esi it is weakness to treat someone as property and that, “Strength is knowing that everyone belongs to themselves” (38). Maame leaves the room, and Abronoma wakes up, scoffing at Esi’s father, saying her own father was a Big Man, and remarking, “now look at what I am” (38). She reveals to Esi that Maame was a servant and was raped by a Big Man in a Fante village, and that Esi is not her first daughter. Abronoma says in her village separated sisters are doomed to remain separated.
Esi tries to befriend Abronoma, who convinces Esi to send word to her father. After a restless night, she sends a message with the messenger man, and Abronoma is thrilled. Esi asks if she is forgiven, and Abronoma replies “Everything is equal” (40). One evening in the village, when Big Man is visiting Maame’s hut, the call goes out across the village that they are being attacked. Big Man rushes out with a machete, and Esi tries to get Maame to flee with her, but her mother is frozen in fear and begins mumbling “words she had never spoken before” about leaving her sister with Baaba and fire (42). She gives Esi a glimmering black and gold stone and insists she run away. Esi leaves her with a knife and runs to the woods, where she climbs a tree and hides until a warrior finds her and brings her down with a rock.
Esi is captured and has been walking in a group of 35 captured people for at least 10 days when she meets Tansi, who tells her the White men are going to eat them “like goats.” The girls become friends. They begin to near the coast of Fanteland, arriving in a village ruled by chief Abeeku (this is Effia’s natal village). Fiifi challenges the trade, worried their Asante allies would be furious, but Abeeku asserts he will trade with the highest bidder. “Governor James,” Effia’s husband, arrives with a group of White men, and they undress the captives to evaluate them. Fearing she will lose her stone, Esi swallows it.
Back in the present, Esi is up to her ankles in human waste, packed in tightly with the other women. Some drunk soldiers arrive and molest the women while the others hiss at them. Esi is chosen by one of the soldiers and led to his quarters, where he rapes her on the floor. She has light, continual bleeding as the cycle of starvation goes on for days, and Esi tries to understand how sex could have been pleasurable for her mother. James Collins comes into the dungeon, the white men select 20 women, and he checks their bodies. When he gets to Esi, he seems to recognize her: “He looked at her carefully, then blinked his eyes and shook his head” (49). He feels the blood between her legs and gives her a look of pity. As she is led out of the dungeon, she remembers her mother’s stone and dives to the ground to dig it out. She is carried away before she can.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
Homegoing opens with a spreading fire that sweeps through 18th-century Ghana, symbolizing the destructive spread of the slave trade on Africa. This fire, which seems to originate with the Fante, reaches indiscriminately across the land to the Asantes, following Maame’s path from a Fanteland village to an Asante village and linking her two daughters, Effia and Esi. In Chapter 1, “Effia,” The fire is personified as a beast, as it “lived off the air; it slept in caves and hid in trees” (3), just as it is “unconcerned” with its path of destruction, disappearing into the night. Like the fire, the slave trade seems to take on a life of its own, destructive and detached from its lasting effects in Africa and abroad. This fire becomes a major theme of Effia’s family line, and Cobbe Otcher knows this fire will haunt his family “for as long as the line continued” (3). The seven yams he loses in the fire symbolize the seven generations impacted by the slave trade in Homegoing, beginning with Effia’s marriage to a British man but essentially starting with his rape of Maame.
In the first two chapters of Homegoing, Gyasi juxtaposes two sisters living opposite lives that are marked by the Atlantic slave trade. Effia’s story opens with a birth and ends with a death, symbolizing the transition from an old Africa to a new one marked by violence and generational trauma. Her story centers on the emerging partnership with the British and the legacy of that partnership in Ghana. Throughout her life in the village, Effia bears witness to this partnership between her Fante tribe and the British as the men in her village begin to provide slaves for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. As a result, her village profits and grows, and certain women in the village figure into these alliances. Through intermarriage, or what was commonly known as cassare, the marriage of African women to European men assured political and economic bonds between the tribes providing slaves and the Europeans buying the slaves. Once destined to marry an emerging chief in the village, Effia sees her life is disrupted by this new trade, and through Baaba’s scheming, she becomes one of the brides.
Effia adapts to her new life, which shifts from one characterized by abuse to one in which she is generally loved by her husband James and well cared for. However, despite the relative peace she finds in her new life, maintaining her happiness requires her to look away from the slave trade she knows is happening in the Castle just beneath her feet. Effia struggles with this knowledge, realizing her husband is involved in the trade of women who “looked like her and smelled like her” (25), but it is a way of life and she is powerless to challenge it. Indeed, Effia herself is essentially sold into servitude through this marriage; Baaba’s plan to hide her daughter’s menstruation so she could arrange a highly profitable marriage to the British governor is yet another form of enslavement, with her daughter traded for goods and a profitable alliance. Furthermore, Effia is rejected by her own tribe as cursed, and she has little choice but to make the most of her new life at the center of the slave trade.
If Effia’s story and family line are characterized by fire, Esi’s will be symbolized by the vast, open water of the Atlantic. When the reader meets Esi, she has already been captured and sold into slavery; she is waiting in a filthy dungeon, surrounded by other women slaves in abject misery, soon to be transported by boat across the ocean to America. To escape her suffering, she remembers her previous life in the form of flashback memories. Contrasted with her half-sister Effia’s childhood story, Esi’s life is characterized by loving parents and a village that adores her. Through her narrative, the reader gets to know Maame, whose forgiving and gentle mothering likewise contrasts sharply with a violent, resentful Baaba. However, like Effia, Esi’s life has already been touched by the slave trade, as the men in her village have also established some trading of prisoners while keeping prisoners like Abronoma as domestic slaves.
In Esi’s story, both Abronoma and Maame serve to illustrate the destructive practice of domestic enslavement in Africa and the cycle of violence sparked by the practice. Because of Maame’s initial enslavement and rape by Cobbe, Effia’s long line of displaced descendants is born, while the enslavement of Abronoma ultimately leads to the raid that steals Esi from her family home and sets her on a path to enslavement in the American South. While Effia never learns of her half-sister Esi, Abronoma reveals this information to Esi, along with the foreboding saying that separated sisters are “like a woman and her reflection, doomed to stay on opposite sides of the pond” (39). Indeed, it is through revealing this information that Abronoma secures her freedom and ensures Esi’s capture.
This violence is rooted in the effects of toxic masculinity on the lives of men and women in the tribes. In “Effia,” Cobbe’s rape of his servant, Maame, is a violation that was certainly condoned as natural for a virile man, yet it is the spark that divides the family for generations to come. Similarly, while Big Man is a loving father, in “Esi” he feels the pressure to build his reputation in his tribe, which is accomplished through violent raiding and taking prisoners by force. This violence reaches a climax with the story of Abronoma, whom he is obliged to punish; as the children’s song illustrates, “The Dove has failed. Oh, what to do? Make her to suffer or you’ll fail too!” (37). Big Man’s status is upheld by an idea of masculinity that is demonstrated though violence, force, brutality, and mercilessness. This leads to Abronoma’s father’s attack on the village and Esi’s capture, rape, and exile from Africa. In Homegoing, systems of violent, patriarchal authority result in the dissolution of the social order they are meant to uphold, most keenly affecting the women in each family.
While Esi and Effia never meet, their lives contain many parallels. They likely intersect in the Castle, with one living above and the other passing through the dungeon below. Both women receive the black and gold stone from their mother Maame; however, Esi loses hers in the dungeon, symbolizing the loss of her family legacy and identity through the dehumanizing transit through the Castle. Both women become pregnant by an English man, Effia through marriage and the Esi by the rape she endures in the Castle, with each of their family lines genetically altered by the European slave trade, right down to their DNA. Both women are also lifted up and supported through the female communities they form in their respective captivities, with Esi finding some shelter in her friendship with Tansi and Effia finding support among the other African wives at the Castle.
In these opening chapters, Gyasi presents the readers with two women whose fates are radically different but who could just as easily be living each other’s lives. In “Esi,” James Collins seems to recognize his wife, Effia, as he physically examines Esi. He most certainly sees her resemblance to his wife, echoing Effia’s earlier thought that he might have difficulty discerning between herself and the African women in the dungeon. However, the moment also underscores that Esi’s fate could just as easily be Effia’s, condemning the cruelty of Africans selling their own people into the European slave trade. While Gyasi later tempers this critique in “James” by showing that the African tribes had no idea how cruel American slavery would be, the contrasting stories of Esi and Effia serve to mark the betrayal inherent to the practice of slave trading among African tribes and the patriarchal structures guiding African social life.
