Generational Search for Home: History, Race and Gendered Perspectives in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing

Abstract

Not so many writers have focused on the concept of persistent search for home in the writings of African people in the diaspora and at the same time presenting an in-depth tracing of the history of uprootment of the Africans (through slavery) from their homeland. Not only does the title of the novel by Yaa Gyasi problematise the status of the African American as one who is lost, not at home, thereby in physical and spiritual exile. This status not only denies them their cultural values, language, identity and the dignity of a home, but is also almost misconstrued to refer to a physical homegoing. The concept of alienation is also underlined in the title—usually people refer to homecoming, thus making homegoing underline the detachment that has been fostered through a physical and spiritual hiatus hundreds of years old. Yaa Gyasi attempts to demonstrate the spiritual connections between the black people in the diaspora and the homeland, Africa. Gyasi also attempts to recover the lost identity through a spiritual pilgrimage to Africa in their effort to discover their ancestral roots and retrieve African values. This chapter thus captures how this journey back to Africa or dream alienation to Africa have always haunted the African in an effort to reclaim and reconnect to his/her roots thereby combatting the alienation, the state of lack of anchorage and loss of identity that is pervasive amongst those living in the diaspora. Reference to the history of slavery and to Africa as original home to the black people accounts for the deep-seated yearning to belong physically and if all fails, the purported spiritual journey to Africa as the final resting place of choice. This chapter also examines the uniqueness of this text in not simply chronicling a tapestry of historical events as they effect the African American in general but recreating and laying bare the problems of the black woman at the incursion of slavery and colonialism. Gyasi attempts to present a balance of the effects of slavery and colonialism on two continents—Africa and North America. Her novel cuts across the history of slavery/colonialism, race, gender and class, while at the same time underlining the enduring motif of Africa as the final resting place of the black person in the diaspora. This study is informed by postcolonial and Africana Womanist theories and utilises critical textual analysis of the text in question.