Smithfield Critics Book Discussion Group

The Smithfield Critics meet at 12:00 pm on the third Wednesday of each month. This month’s selection is: "Homegoing" by Yaa Gyasi

Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of "Homegoing" follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, while the other thread follows Esi and her children into America. "Homegoing" makes history visceral, and captures how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.