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 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1-Part 2
Chapter 7 Summary: “Abena”
James Collins and Akosua Mensah’s daughter Abena is living in the village, and at 25 she is concerned she will never marry. Her father is called “Unlucky” by the villagers because his crops always fail, and she knows none of the men in her village want to “take a chance with Unlucky’s daughter” (133). Abena wonders if she has inherited her father’s curse or if “she herself was a curse” (133). She asks her father if she can visit Kumasi to see the city and “walk by the Asante King’s palace” (134). He refuses, slapping her face when she insults him by calling him a coward and a liar, which shocks her since he has never hit her. Despite her father’s mysterious origins, she can see the white in his skin and can hear his Fante accent. Abena is proud of her Asante origins, due in part to their success against the British, and she hopes to someday start a new life in Kumasi.
Abena’s mother explains that she and Old Man are not welcome in Kumasi, because she defied her parents to marry him, and he came all the way from Fanteland. She explains that James “was the son of a Big Man, the grandson of two very Big Men” but wanted to break free of that life (135). Abena sees this choice as the source of her shame. Akosua tells Abena her father will not stop her from going to Kumasi.
That evening Abena visits her childhood friend Ohene Nyarko. He is a successful farmer and well respected in their small community. His first wife, Mefia, does not like Abena, and Ohene Nyarko jokes that it is because he and Abena experimented sexually when younger. Abena asks him to escort her to Kumasi, and at first, he refuses. He addresses her as “darling,” which feels wrong to her, and she thinks about how he has enough wealth to make her his second wife but always makes excuses. He sees she is upset and promises to take her. A week later, they leave for Kumasi.
In Kumasi they visit the Asantehene’s palace and see the Golden Stool, protected behind glass, which “contained the sunsum, the soul, of the entire Asante nation” (139). Abena is moved by the experience. As they leave the palace, they encounter an old man who seems to recognize her. He exclaims, “Are you a ghost?” and calls her “James” (139), touching her face with affection. Ohene Nyarko intervenes, and the old man apologizes and hobbles away. Abena suspects he was royalty, and Ohene Nyarko shouts, “If he is a royal, then you are a royal, too” (139), not knowing the truth he speaks.
Ohene Nyarko goes to buy new farming tools, and Abena enjoys the city on her own. While resting, she encounters a Christian missionary group building a church in the city, and she sees a White man for the first time, who beckons her closer. She thinks about how Europeans once worked with the Asante and Fante, but now “the white man, whom they called Abro Ni, wicked one, for all the trouble he had caused” (140), was unwelcome. She realizes it is getting late, and while she is leaving, the missionaries tell her to find them if she ever needs help.
Ohene Nyarko is disgusted to hear about the White man and missionaries, asking, “Don’t they know how to stay out of Asante?” (141). His comments remind her of a village meeting where an old man spoke of his cousin being stolen long ago by slave traders. Abena’s father suddenly spoke up, telling them the cousin would have been taken to the Castle and explaining how all the tribes participated in this system in which the slaves were sent away to “Aburokyire: America, Jamaica” (142). The villagers nod but do not fully comprehend.
It takes them two weeks to return to their village, and on the last night they rest in a sheltered area. Abena confronts him about getting married. He promises to marry her after the next big harvest, and their argument turns into lovemaking. After they return, the village suffers a series of bad harvests, and each year Ohene Nyarko’s promise to marry her is set aside. Still, Abena and Ohene Nyarko continue to sleep together until the village suspects their “fornication” is causing the bad luck. The elders decide that unless there is a good harvest, Abena will be removed from the village “when she conceived a child or after seven bad years” (146). One day in the sixth year, Ohene Nyarko leaves for Osu to obtain cocoa seeds, a new plant that could “change everything” and spark profitable trade with the White man overseas.
Ohene Nyarko returns and plants the cocoa seeds, and in little time the plants begin to thrive. The village is buzzing with anticipation as they wait for the harvest, and after treating the seeds, Ohene Nyarko leaves to sell them as the village prepares a humble feast. He is successful and returns with four fat goats and bags of yams, nuts, wine, and oils. The village has a huge celebration, but instead of asking Abena to marry him, Ohene Nyarko withdraws from her, and she returns home, heartbroken.
The next day, the village elders approach her to tell her she can remain, but she tells them Ohene Nyarko will not marry her. They question him, and he explains that obtaining the cocoa seeds meant promising to marry someone’s daughter, so Abena must wait. She decides to leave town rather than face more humiliation. Before she leaves, James gets her to wait while he digs up Effia’s necklace, buried on their land. He explains why he left Fanteland and that while the villagers call him Unlucky, “every season I feel lucky to have this land, to do this honorable work, not the shameful work of my family” (153). He had buried the stone as a gesture of thanks for the land. He gives her the necklace, and she puts it on, hugging both parents. She leaves the next morning for Kumasi and goes to the missionary church, thanking her ancestors.
Chapter 8 Summary: “H”
“H” opens the second half of the book, set in Alabama in 1880. H, the son of Kojo and Anna, has been arrested and put in jail. He shouts he is innocent, but his cellmate tries to calm him down. H, a big, strong man, lifts his cellmate off his feet by the neck, asking “What I done?” (157). The cellmate says he overheard H was seen “studyin’ a white woman” (158), which H denies. The cellmate says all the White man has to do is say he is guilty and he will be arrested and convicted. The cellmate warns H, who believes he was only about 13 at the end of the war, that the “War may be over but it ain’t ended” (158).
H is in jail for four days, and although the guards will not tell him what he is charged with, he is fined $10, which he cannot pay. He thinks about his woman, Ethe, whom he would call for help, except that they parted on bad terms after he cheated on her and called her by another woman’s name. The next day he is “sold by the state of Alabama” to work in the coal mines outside of Birmingham as part of a convict-lease program (159).
When he arrives at the mines, the pit boss and deputy negotiate a price for H’s labor, agreeing on $19 a month. H insists he is free, to which the pit boss replies, “No such thing as a free nigger” and holds a knife to his neck (160), drawing some blood. A month later, H has discovered that an “entire city” exists underground in the coal mines. His body has changed from the labor, and “the shovel felt like an extension of his arm” (161), as he regularly shovels thousands of pounds of coal. He reflects on the dangers in the mine and thinks it is worse than slavery, for in his life as a slave he was valuable to his master, but in the mines he could be quickly replaced.
H remembers being partnered with a White third-class man named Thomas, who collapses after one day of shoveling. If Thomas and H do not fill their quota, they will both be whipped, so H takes both shovels and does it himself, impressing the pit boss. That evening, H cannot feel his arms, and he keeps repeating, “I don’t want to die” in terror (163). His friend Joecy calms him with a hug. The next day his arms still do not work, and H is partnered with Thomas again. Joecy is the cutter that day—he is a short man but an expert miner. Joecy, his partner Bull, and Thomas all shovel enough coal to meet their four quotas; after, Thomas thanks H for his help the previous day. When asked why he is named H, he recalls that his old master said it was the name his mother (Anna) gave him before she killed herself and they had to remove him by cesarian. Thomas dies of tuberculosis a month later.
In 1889, H finishes his sentence at Rock Slope a year early thanks to his hard work and skill. During a scuffle in a bar, a man rips H’s shirt, revealing whip scars on H’s back and calling him a con. H then decides to move to Pratt City, a “town that was made up of ex-cons, white and black alike” (168), all free miners. In Pratt City he finds Joecy, who has moved there with his wife and 11-year-old son Lil Joe. The wife unsuccessfully tries to convince H to send a letter to Ethe.
The next day H is hired as a free laborer in the mines. H settles into life in Pratt City, where Black and White miners value their community because “they knew they had to rely on each other if they wanted to survive” (169). Now paid for his labor, he feels, ironically, that the mine “was one of the best things” to happen to him (169), teaching him a worthy skill. He begins to build a house for himself, and Joecy asks him to join the union, saying they need his fighting spirit.
At H’s first meeting, a doctor speaks to them about black lung disease, saying they should fight for better conditions and shorter hours. H says they should ask for more money since it is impossible not to breathe the dust, and the crowd is impressed to see “Two-Shovel H” at a meeting. On his way home he is overwhelmed by the thought of his own mortality, the time he wasted in the mines, and his lack of a family. At Joecy’s house, he asks Lil Joe to write a letter to Ethe for him; he mails the letter the next morning.
H regularly attends union meetings, getting more vocal, and raising doubts when a White member pushes for a strike, but eventually he agrees. The strike begins, and the bosses bring in convicts while the free miners picket. One day H calls from the picket line for them to let the convicts go; most are children and teenagers convicted on bogus charges. One terrified boy breaks free and runs, but he is shot and killed. The miners swarm the bosses, breaking equipment and dumping coal down the mine. H holds a White man over the pit by the throat, threatening, “One day the world gon’ know what you done here” (174), but he lets the man go as H is “not the con they told him he was” (174). The strike ends after six more months, with the miners earning 50 cents more.
After the raise is announced, H returns home to find Ethe cooking dinner in his house. She says she considered his letter for two months but was hurt by his infidelity, thinking “Ain’t I been through enough?” (175). She says that by the time she was ready to talk to him, he was already imprisoned, and she did not know what to do for him. Their dinner burns as she speaks, but he takes her into his arms as she gradually relents.
Chapters 7-8 Analysis
As the novel continues, each main character’s story speaks to the generational trauma the slave trade has inflicted on each branch of the family, even after slavery has been abolished. In “Abena,” the reader encounters the daughter of James Richard Collins and his wife, Akosua Mensah, both of whom are quite a bit older. The price of freedom from his family legacy is that James Collins has become nameless, known only by nicknames given to him—“Old Man,” “Unlucky,” and in a moment of anger, “Shame, or Fearful, or Liar” (134). In the chapter “James,” the reader meets James as a vibrant, confident young man who knew his name and identity. Ironically, as an old man, he is, at least to the villagers and his daughter, without an identity and farming infertile lands.
In contrast, Abena knows she deserves more than to be unmarried and living with her parents, and she craves knowledge of herself and her origins. The consistent failure of her family’s crops has ruined her chances of finding a suitable marriage partner in their small village. Where James finds freedom in farming, Abena finds only restrictions. By 25, she wants to meet the bigger world, traveling to Kumasi to see a place where “she did not know everyone’s name” (138), and she unknowingly gets a glimpse of that heritage in visiting the royal palace. In this pivotal moment, Abena, who is of royal blood, is recognized by an old man who would have known James, possibly his cousin Kwame. The encounter is full of potential—for Kwame it is like seeing a ghost, and there is a tension that Abena might be recognized and welcomed into her rightful identity. However, while the truth of her identity is spoken from multiple lips, from Kwame to Ohene Nyarko, who mockingly jokes, “If he is a royal, then you are a royal too” (139), it is never recognized. The moment of recognition passes, and her life takes a different path.
This heritage is eventually confirmed, however, when James finally tells her about his life and his grandmother Effia, giving Abena the black and gold stone necklace that has been passed down through generations. This heritage is shared with her on the eve of her real independence, allowing her to step into a new concept of self as she frees herself of her circumstantial captivity in her small village. It also allows her to embrace and forgive her parents, finally understanding the weight of the sacrifice they made for their life together. This realization of her self-worth coincides with her own liberation from her lover, Ohene Nyarko, who would never honor her as one of his wives nor allow her to seek better.
While freedom from his family is truly liberating for James, and a source of pride and happiness despite their difficult life, these same circumstances are crushing for a woman, due in part to societal structures that restrict women’s value to that of a wife and mother. “Abena” shows a true cost of the hard break from the slave trade, for despite his separation from the family, the evil Effia spoke of continues to follow James’s descendants, haunting his bloodline. Even Abena’s bid for freedom ends with her murder a year or two later, and the evil reemerges as the psychological torment of her daughter, Akua.
Abena’s chapter also speaks to a moment of transition in Ghana and for their village. The slave trade is over, but the British remain interested in the country, ever seeking ways to colonize and control the African continent. There are new opportunities for trade, as seen in the extremely profitable market for cocoa plants, which will transform the village itself. While the Asante tribes have been able to make some progress in holding back the British forces, the appearance of Christian missionaries foreshadows new forms of control and dominance from European colonizers. Abena’s story of infertility, patience, bounty, and independence speaks directly to some parallel political developments in Ghana that will shape the country into the 20th century.
The chapter “H” tracks the decade-long evolution of H from a fiery young man to a more cautious, reflective, and skilled 40-year-old. Like “Abena,” this chapter centers on patience and endurance as a major theme, as H carries out his nine-year jail sentence. Like his grandfather Sam, H is described as having superhuman strength, a fighting spirit, and an almost animalistic demeanor, but looking beyond his physical size, H is smart—his mind is always working, and he is a problem solver. By the end of the chapter he has put that mind to productive use, negotiating better pay and working conditions with the union.
The metaphor of “Hell” carries over to H’s life, as through the generations before him. By the end of his chapter, H’s father, Kojo, is living in his own type of hell, separated from his wife and children, adrift in New York. Thrown back into a form of slavery, H, like his grandmother Ness and his grandfather Sam, is unjustly incarcerated and literally sent underground every day in chains to work off a seemingly unending sentence. Much like Ness’s disconnection from reality, during his time underground H “could hardly remember being free” and must force himself to remember Ethe to keep a connection to himself while work partners die or move on (162).
However, while the coal mines are a metaphoric hell for him, he develops a valuable skill that allows him to remake his life once he finishes his sentence. Like coal, which only becomes valuable after being compressed underground over millions of years, H makes a painful but valuable transformation as a prisoner. When he emerges from the mines, he is older and wiser, and he has more perspective on what is most important to him (starting a family with Ethe). H has a chance to redefine himself, and while his first encounter in the bar is humiliating, in the end “he was not the con they had told him he was” (174), and he proves his worth to his community and friends.
H to return underground, but the ability to make that choice is significant and key to his success. Being a free miner makes him a good salary and helps him get established in Pratt City, where he builds his own home. Next, H’s friend Joecy helps him find his place in a community; H joins a union, which allows him to use his mind and his natural authority to demand more for not only himself but his colleagues. Eventually, he takes a chance and reunites with Ethe, starting a family. Freedom for H means defining his own worth, using his mind, protecting his community, committing to his woman, and doing skilled labor.
Similar to other characters in Homegoing, H is unaware of his family origins, and he is even partially named. Naming plays a significant role here—H should have been born into a large family, the eighth child, with a sequential name to match. Instead, H is stolen away, that tie to his family cut just as he is literally cut out of his dying mother, and his name is forever severed as well. H’s name is symbolic of that severing from the family, from his whole self, along with the theft of slavery on generations of families. When H finds his place in the community and reinvents himself, he receives a new nickname that aptly refers to his strength and spirit, “Two-Shovel H” (170).
Each of these chapters address the limits of freedom for each character, despite the emancipation of the slaves in the mid-19th century. While H was liberated as a teenager and slavery is barely a memory for him, he still has no real access to justice or protection under the law, and he is easily put back into a system that is in some ways worse than slavery. Similarly, while Abena’s father, James, has found freedom in leaving behind his family legacy, the poverty that accompanies living outside of the slave trade is debilitating for Abena, whose low status and gender leave her desperate for marriage. Like H, she is trapped in her circumstances, but she finds freedom, like James, by leaving her village and moving on.
In each of these chapters, themes of desperation, delayed justice, and infertility abound. Both Abena and H worry about the families they think they will never have, and each is desperate to create a meaningful life for themselves but must patiently wait for circumstances, which are out of their control, to change. These heavy themes are interwoven with persistent hope, resilience, loyalty, and patient laboring, all of which pay off for Abena and H, to different degrees. Long-sought-after rewards, such as a bountiful harvest, a hard-won pay raise, or a desperately desired child eventually come to each character. The resilience and determination of each character allows them to reclaim personal agency and choose their own paths, defining their freedom in the process.
