Reviews with content warning for Drug abuse - Homegoing

Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

168 reviews

asset_exe's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is a novel that portrays the unknown yet simple relation between Africans and African Americans. The story is illustrated through two sisters, both of whom know nothing of the other, and each birthing generations of people who represent the far past, near past and present. Effia, the sister left behind, is the genesis of the African royal lineage of Ghana, as portrayed in the novel, and takes us back to the pre-colonial African states, which were solely ran by Africans who held trading relationships with Europeans.

Spoiler

Her descendants' stories connect fiction to reality through the presentation of events such as the war of the golden stool (The Asante-British wars), Kwame-Nkrumah's victory to independence and modern day Ghana. Esa, on the other hand, is taken away by slave traders and traded to America as a slave. Her descendants' stories highlight the struggles/hardships that black Americans underwent during slavery, Jim Crow, and modern day USA. Through the two sides being connected yet very different, in terms of struggle and hardship, Gyasi is able to bring out the interconnection between Africans and African Americans and share the struggles that each black generation underwent due to a common denominator, white people.

. In her novel, Gyasi greatly provokes white supremacists by illustrating the torturous acts that were performed on these people. Alternatively, Gyasi also concludes how that while we were all disconnected at some point of our ancestral lives, African Americans and Africans are one in the same.

Content Warnings

mysterymom46's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Content Warnings

rieviolet's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

It is not easy to cover such a vast temporal space in a single book, so I recognize Gyasi's ability to tackle a story so big in scope.
Still, I think that this kind of narrative structure (chapters with an ever-changing point of view) is just not my personal preference. Inevitably (as it happens, for example, with short stories collections), there were certain characters' storylines that I appreciated more compared to others. In general, I found the final chapters (those closer to us in time) less engaging.
There were also sections that I liked but that ended a bit too abruptly, leaving too much left unsaid about crucial events and the characters' fate (and not all of the storylines got mentioned again and expanded upon, further on in the narration).

At times, the book got a bit too graphic for my (I admit a bit delicate) sensibilities, but it does deal with very heavy topics; just be sure to check the content warnings.

Content Warnings

cardlikecredit's review against another edition

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challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Content Warnings

dreamersmind's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

This book is tragic. There were many times that I had to put the book down and sit with my thoughts. This book follows generational lines of 2 half sisters that did not know each other. One sister was the wife of a British slave trader and the other was taken prisoner and sold into slavery in the USA. Each chapter is a different person in the following generation and the stories span over about 250 years. We get important snippets of each persons lives that weave a story that gives a clear picture of how colonialism, slavery and systemic racism affected real life people in each time period and how the actions and history of the past continue to affect the present and future generations.

Quotes:

“You think you know but you don’t know, “she said. “Evil is like a shadow. It follows you”

“Trust is a thing to be earned. I don’t trust you. I have seen what power can do to men, and you are from one of the most powerful families.”

“This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others. Those who were there in the olden days, they told stories to the children so that the children would know, so that the children could tel stories to their children. And so on and so on. But now we come upon the problem of conflicting stories. Kojo Nayeli says that when the warriors came to his village their coats were red, but Kwame Adu says that they were blue. Whose story do we believe then? The boys were silent. They stared at him, waiting. We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out you must find that story too. From there you begin to get a clearer yet still imperfect picture”

Content Warnings

joppiereading's review

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challenging dark emotional

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

A beautiful collection of narratives and memories, of how a trauma crosses the boundaries of generations and how the way it’s dealt with matters. As is often the case with short story collections, though, that not all chapters sparked as much to me.

Content Warnings