Homegoing

“James” opens with the image of a British governor’s head on a stick, posted as a warning to other British. The image is menacing and grotesque, signifying the conflict to come at the end of the chapter, as well as the greater conflict brewing between Europeans and Africans over control of the African continent. In this chapter, 17-year-old James is a wise young man, precocious in his understanding of the political and economic dynamics of the slave trade. He warns the children (and thus the reader) that a victory over the British is not necessarily good, spooking the children with a warning that the Asantes “will come for us Fantes next” (89). James knows the Asantes capture the slaves, while the Fantes trade them, but he also knows that the British incite wars between the tribes, “knowing that whatever captives were taken from these wars would be sold to them for trade” (89). Even at 17, he sees clearly that the cycle of violence is never-ending and will come to their doorstep eventually.

This cycle of violence is rooted in the slave trade, from which James’s family profits greatly in power and resources. The English slave trade was abolished in 1807, but an illegal slave trade persisted, and the British continued to establish themselves more firmly in Africa. In this part of the story, set during the 19th-century expansion of imperialism under Queen Victoria, the European wars for control over the continent have only just begun for the people in Africa. As James’s father, Quey Collins, cynically observes, “There’s more at stake here than just slavery, my brother. It’s a question of who will own the land, the people, the power” (93). This remains a source of conflict well into the 20th century, when James’s great-grandson Yaw finally sees Ghana achieve independence in 1957.

Young James feels the weight of the slave trade and the wars to come, now with a greater awareness of the cruelty of slavery abroad. While earlier generations remained generally unaware of these differences, by the 1820s the abolitionist movement was receiving global support and had disseminated widely. Participation in the slave trade is not questioned within his family but rather accepted as a sign of the tribe’s strength, culminating in the reverence for a “Big Man” leading the tribe. Before James can be put into the Big Man role, he meets Akosua Mensah, who is the first person to question him on his contribution to the cycle of enslavement and to help him see the alternative.

As a character, James Richard Collins is the product of three separate cultures, Fante and English from his father, Quey, and Asante from his mother, Nana Yaa. He is named for his grandfather, whom Quey hates, as well as “Richard,” which the reader knows carries a myriad of meanings for Quey rooted in his unrequited love story. James is unaware of the significance his name carries for his father, but he is keenly aware of how that legacy weighs heavily on his family, and he is aware of his unique position in his family’s slave trade. The wealth, status, and easy life he has inherited, and the problem of his power over others, are his to rectify or perpetuate.

Ironically, having power over others becomes its own sort of prison, and this makes his freedom from their legacy even more significant, for “it would be the last time James would ever use his power to make another do his bidding” (110). James has learned from the mistakes of his father, who is seen by many as weak, and who is trapped in a miserable marriage of convenience. Almost everything Quey tried to hide is plainly clear to James, down to Fiifi’s influence, as “so many of [his parent’s] arguments led to Fiifi and the decisions he had made for Quey and their family” (90). While Quey’s choices were nuanced and forced in a way James probably cannot appreciate, with Fiifi gone, James finds the strength to let go of power and embrace a new life with Akosua.

James is the first in his family to prioritize his own happiness and break out of a violent system as best he can. His only path to freedom is to fake is own death, to let his previous identity die, and to take on a new identity. When he is erroneously put on the pile of dead bodies, he undergoes this symbolic death and convinces the warrior who saved him to carry the news to his family. The 40 days it takes him to travel to Akosua is symbolic of the mourning process mentioned earlier in the text, when the family mourns for 40 days after the death of his grandfather. At the end of those 40 days and a journey deeper into Ghana, James can finally re-emerge as a new man, a “lowly farmer who had gotten lost” (110), and begin a new family legacy.

Contrasting with James’s story of power and privilege, “Kojo” opens on the reality of Black lives under constant threat in pre-Civil War America. The reader meets Kojo almost 40 years after he was carried to freedom by Ma Aku. Although Kojo has established himself in Baltimore society, creating an existence as a free man doing skilled work in the harbor, the fear of being caught and returned to a life of slavery inhibits his movement and freedom in the world. Making the most of his life, however, he thinks of his freedom in terms signified by his ability to create—Kojo has become a skilled ship builder with an excellent reputation. For Kojo, “A free man didn’t have to be a servant or a coach driver. He could make something with his own hands. He could fix something, sell something” (121). Furthermore, he has fathered eight children, creating a life and a family that are his own to come home to, if only for a time. He sees his fatherhood as a sort of “debt” he owes to his parents, to create the family and life they never had. However, that debt is freeing for him, as he spent much of his childhood in loneliness.

Kojo is successful in creating his own life until the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is passed, still 15 years before the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the United States. While there are White people willing to help his family and look out for them, Gyasi shows that there are limits to the reach of abolitionists before the Civil War. Still, the Mathisons show a change in thinking, as Mr. Mathison insists on calling him Kojo, the Asante name of a boy born on a Monday. He says, “Taking away your name is the first step” (118), a point that seeks to restore his humanity, but that likewise foreshadows the un-naming of Kojo’s son “H” as he returns to slavery.

Kojo’s take is the first from a father’s perspective, and for a time it is a happy one. He loves his wife, Anna, and he loves and cares for his children and Ma Aku, as they all work together to create a better life. Despite the foreboding developments in the chapter, Kojo tries to carry on with life as normal. His reluctance to leave Baltimore is in part a resistance to the fear he has lived under his whole life. When the bad news of the Fugitive Slave Act interrupts the wedding (124), they try to carry on, unaware of the implications for the whole family. They cannot see the danger ahead nor heed the warnings, in part because it is unthinkable that a Black person born into freedom might be kidnapped and sold into slavery, but also because Kojo is tired of running and has tried to remain undetectable by doing everything right and having all the family’s papers in order. In the end, all their practicing with papers is worthless in a system built on injustice.

When Anna is stolen from them, that dream of a normal life falls apart. By the end of the chapter, Kojo’s life has returned to one of loneliness and isolation, with all of his creative outlets destroyed. He goes from a life of skilled shipbuilding, surrounded by a large family, to one sitting at a bar alone, admiring the beautiful workmanship of another man: “he’s always suspected that some Negro had done it, perhaps during his first days of freedom in New York, so happy that he was able to do something for himself rather than for someone else that he put his whole heart into it” (131). Despite Kojo’s ostensible freedom, his life is nonetheless destroyed by the system of slavery.

In both “James” and “Kojo,” freedom emerges as a major theme in the lives of these two men, with Gyasi exploring the limits of freedom and personal agency for each man under his personal circumstances. The stories are defined by their roles as men within a family structure, and Kojo’s story in particular is shaped by his role as a father and husband in a large family. For both men, freedom is defined by the ability to love a woman of his choosing and to create a life with that woman. Freedom is also defined by the ability to do honest, skilled, and humble work, creating something that is useful to the village or the city, whether ship building or farming. To embrace these choices, both men have broken ties with their families. For James, breaking ties with his family gives him the liberty to choose honest work and sever his role in perpetuating the slave trade, whereas Kojo’s freedom is a consequence of losing his biological parents, Ness and Sam, who remained enslaved.

Kojo’s freedom is compromised and continually overshadowed by the possibility of being forced back into slavery. In the end, this fear becomes a reality, when his wife and unborn son are unlawfully stolen off the street and sold into slavery. Gyasi demonstrates how fundamentally unfair the justice system was for anyone of African descent in the United States prior to the emancipation of slaves, when a free-born Black citizen could be kidnapped and sold into slavery with no consequences whatsoever. For Kojo and his generation, freedom remains an elusive dream—by the end of the chapter he remains a free man, but he has lost all of the joys in life that defined that freedom.

In later chapters, Gyasi reveals the consequences of James’s bid for freedom by leaving his family. While he considers his life as a poor and unsuccessful farmer a worthwhile trade, his daughters and descendants struggle with their separation from the traditions of the family and a sense of history and belonging. Indeed, in these two parallel lives, Gyasi introduces a definitive severing within the family. While Kojo does not remember his parents, he has Ma Aku to tell him stories about his parents. Not so for his son, H, who, like millions of enslaved people and their ancestors, will grow up ignorant of his family heritage. Similarly, James’s break from his family means that Abena, Akua, Yaw, and Marjorie never receive that cultural heritage passed along within a family and never know their true place (as royalty) within two powerful tribes. On both sides of the family, all generational wealth is lost, along with the knowledge of the “self” so often defined by one’s connection to the family.