Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi (2016)
“Seven generations of two Black family lines — one trapped in slavery, one complicit in it — and the fire that connects them all the way to the present.”
EraContemporary / Historical Fiction
Pages305
Difficulty★★☆☆☆ Moderate
AP Appearances3
Character Analysis
Never given her own chapter, Maame appears only in fire visions and in the founding action of the novel — fleeing a burning village. She is the source of both lineages. Her presence in Akua's fire dreams suggests that Gyasi conceives of ancestral trauma as something that echoes forward, appearing to descendants as visions they cannot explain.