Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

 

This is the kind of book that captures you so completely you find yourself reading it at work with the book covering your keyboard, hoping no one notices but also not really caring if you get fired. It's a subtle sci-fi story about youth, freedom, and a lot of other good stuff — too much more about the plot might take something away from the magical, transformative experience of reading it. Instead, I will say that the honest way Never Let Me Go deals with love and disappointment makes it a book that anyone who ever plans to love another person should probably read immediately.  

http://www.powells.com/25-books-to-read-before-you-die

Mostly, we thought this book was depressing and struggled to have a positive take-away. We focused on one question: How would you describe the tragedy at the heart of Never Let Me Go? We discussed the lack of humanity, the love triangle, and holding the pillow, among other things.

1. Kathy introduces herself as an experienced carer. She prides herself on knowing how to keep her donors calm, "even before fourth donation" (page 3). How long does it take for the meaning of such terms as "donation," "carer," and "completed" to be fully revealed?

2. Kathy addresses us directly, with statements like "I don't know how it was where you were, but at Hailsham we used to have some form of medical every week" (page 13), and she thinks that we too might envy her having been at Hailsham (page 4). What does Kathy assume about anyone she might be addressing, and why?

3. Why is it important for Kathy to seek out donors who are "from the past," "people from Hailsham" (page 5)? She learns from a donor who'd grown up at an awful place in Dorset that she and her friends at Hailsham had been really "lucky" (page 6). How does the irony of this designation grow as the novel goes on? What does Hailsham represent for Kathy, and why does she say at the end that Hailsham is "something no one can take away" (page 287)?

4. Kathy tells the reader, "How you were regarded at Hailsham, how much you were liked and respected, had to do with how good you were at 'creating'" (page 16). What were Hailsham's administrators trying to achieve in attaching a high value to creativity?

5. Kathy's narration is the key to the novel's disquieting effect. First person narration establishes a kind of intimacy between narrator and reader. What is it like having direct access to Kathy's mind and feelings? How would the novel be different if narrated from Tommy's point of view, or Ruth's, or Miss Emily's?

6. What are some of Ruth's most striking character traits? How might her social behavior, at Hailsham and later at the Cottages, be explained? Why does she seek her "possible" so earnestly (pages 159–67)?

7. One of the most notable aspects of life at Hailsham is the power of the group. Students watch each other carefully and try on different poses, attitudes, and ways of speaking. Is this behavior typical of most adolescents, or is there something different about the way the students at Hailsham seek to conform?

8. How do Madame and Miss Emily react to Kathy and Tommy when they come to request a deferral? Defending her work at Hailsham, Miss Emily says, "Look at you both now! You've had good lives, you're educated and cultured" (page 261). What is revealed in this extended conversation, and how do these revelations affect your experience of the story?

9. Why does Tommy draw animals? Why does he continue to work on them even after he learns that there will be no deferral?

10. Kathy reminds Madame of the scene in which Madame watched her dancing to a song on her Judy Bridgewater tape. How is Kathy's interpretation of this event different from Madame's? How else might it be interpreted? Is the song's title again recalled by the book's final pages (pages 286–88)?

11. After their visit to Miss Emily and Madame, Kathy tells Tommy that his fits of rage might be explained by the fact that "at some level you always knew" (page 275). Does this imply that Kathy didn't? Does it imply that Tommy is more perceptive than Kathy?

12. Does the novel examine the possibility of human cloning as a legitimate question for medical ethics, or does it demonstrate that the human costs of cloning are morally repellent, and therefore impossible for science to pursue? What kind of moral and emotional responses does the novel provoke? If you extend the scope of the book's critique, what are its implications for our own society?

13. The novel takes place in "the late 1990s," and a postwar science boom has resulted in human cloning and the surgical harvesting of organs to cure cancer and other diseases. In an interview with January Magazine, Ishiguro said that he is not interested in realism. In spite of the novel's fictitious premise, however, how "realistically" does Never Let Me Go reflect the world we live in, where scientific advancement can be seemingly irresistible?

14. The teacher Lucy Wainright wanted to make the children more aware of the future that awaited them. Miss Emily believed that in hiding the truth, "We were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you, and we were able to do that principally by sheltering you ... Sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you ... But ... we gave you your childhoods" (page 268). In the context of the story as a whole, is this a valid argument?

15. Is it surprising that Miss Emily admits feeling revulsion for the children at Hailsham? Does this indicate that she believes Kathy and Tommy are not fully human? What is the nature of the moral quandary Miss Emily and Madame have gotten themselves into?

16. Critic Frank Kermode has noted that "Ishiguro is fundamentally a tragic novelist; there is always a disaster, remote but urgent, imagined but real, at the heart of his stories" (London Review of Books, April 21, 2005). How would you describe the tragedy at the heart of Never Let Me Go?

17. Some reviewers have expressed surprise that Kathy, Tommy, and their friends never try to escape their ultimate fate. They cling to the possibility of deferral, but never attempt to vanish into the world of freedom that they view from a distance. Yet they love the film The Great Escape, "the moment the American jumps over the barbed wire on his bike" (page 99). Why might Ishiguro have chosen to present them as fully resigned to their early deaths?

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/never-let-me-go-by-kazuo-ishiguro-reading-guide#ixzz4zPJRAVIk

You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie

 

What is the purpose of a genocide museum? (page 296)

• Elicit the horror and have the hope that it not happen again, therefore, it can be anywhere/everywhere.

• When there is a need for a memorial to remember those of the genocide, it can be anywhere/everywhere.

• When the story is unknown or made invisible, it needs to be in the place where it happened

• A memorial/genocide museum for Native Americans could be in DC, or at a location where a genocide happened, like Wounded Knee.

• Powerful message that you don’t really matter

• Environmental damage and ensuing genocide

What is he so down on “pow wow Indians”?

• Is identity formed as part of a pow wow, but only there, not living the life out of pow wow

• Is there a cost issue?  Can’t afford

• Are you just “posing”?

• The reservation “Indian” is the stereotype, so it sells books.

• Why does he even feel he is not “Indian” enough? Or why do other “Indians” not think he is enough?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

1. In writing this memoir, Sherman Alexie told his sister that there would be a lot of blank spaces. "But I like the blank spaces." What do you think he means — why does he like blank spaces? What might they signify for him?
• He has some bad memories and maybe he can believe a better story than what he remembers

• There are some things he can’t/won’t tell

• “An Indian’s wealth is determined by what they lose And not by what they save.” (wealth is what you give away, a real Indian has more trials and tribulations and pain)

• “We lived in a small house, so there was no escape from the goddamn racket of her loneliness.”

2. Follow-up to Question: Alexie also says, "This book is a series of circles, sacred and profane." Again, what do you think he means? What are the circles — and which are sacred and which profane?
• The rape story keeps circling back

• The U.S. destruction of indigenous land and culture (salmon chapter, uranium mining)

• “Listen. I don't know how or when/ My grieving will end, but I'm always/Relearning how to be human again.”

• “Great pain is repetitive. Grief is repetitive.”
• “This is who I am. This is who I have always been. I am in pain. I am always in pain. But I always find my way to the story. And I always find my way home.”

• “Susan Alexie died of tuberculosis on August 30, 1945. I don't know why the exact date of her death is not on her gravestone. Perhaps it had been about money. Those extra letters and numbers might have been too expensive. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I could write "I don't know" one million times and publish that as my memoir. And, yes, it would be repetitive, experimental, and more metaphor than history, but it would also be emotionally accurate.”

3. Alexie takes an entire book, some 400 pages, to talk about his mother. So … in less than 400 pages … how would you describe Lillian? Talk about those traits that are both admirable and not so admirable, or just plain awful. Does she generate sympathy? Did your feelings toward her change during the course of reading the memoir?
• She did a lot for other people, so does generate sympathy

• She did stop drinking and become sober

• She is a product of her history, too

• “You know," I said to my sister later at the funeral. "I think Mom is telling the truth about losing us. We're never going to know the exact details. But there's too much real pain in this story for it to be a lie."
My sister nodded. She agreed. But what did we agree to? Jesus, we as adults were grateful that our mother had probably told us the truth about endangering us as children. How fucked is that?”

4. Follow-up to Questions 3: How did the process of writing this memoir — and grappling with some memories he says are so painful he almost did not include them — affect Alexie's understanding of his mother? Does he find peace by the end? If so, in what way?
• He finds peace, I understand where you are coming from, but that’s not the same as forgiveness

• When you have parents that are not the parents you want or need, then you probably never find peace, as you grieve not getting your needs met, and have to flip your understanding after people tell you that you should know that they loved you because…

• “Thing is, I don’t believe in ghosts. But I see them all the time.”
• “I realized that my mother had not taught us the tribal language because she knew her children would not be strong enough to carry the responsibility of being the last fluent speakers. She protected us from that spiritual burden. She protected us from that loneliness.”

• Some people THINK in Salish, even though it is English language.

• Language is the last holdout, gem, that people get to hold on to.

• His mother was a fluent speaker (that’s pretty recent), and eventually the “only.”

5. At times Alexie moves the book's focus away from Lillian and back to his own childhood: his medical emergencies, high school years, mental health problems. Talk about those years. What did you find particularly moving or remarkable about his background?
• Medical emergencies

• Kids were mean to him (they through the moccasins in the river)

• “You’re always making up stuff from the past,” she said. “And the stuff you imagine is always better than the stuff that actually happened.”
• “There are family mysteries I cannot solve. There are family mysteries I am unwilling to solve.”

• “So we must forgive all those Who trespass against us? Fuck that shit. I’m not some charitable trust. There are people I will hate even after I’m ashes and dust.”

• “I often wonder why I am the one who remembers all the pain?”

• The juxtaposition of all these different relationships build a quilt.

6. Reviewers make much of the humor in You Don't Have to Say You Love Me. Did it make you laugh as you read it? What in particularly did you find funny.
• He does stand up comedy in real life.

• We did see humor – it made craziness bearable and hardships, too.

7. What is the significance of the book's cover photo?
• His mother is 17 and that’s his sister

• broken frame represents fractures and breaks in the family

• “And the tombstone will never answer. Because the dead have only the voices we give to them.”

8. The book includes 160 poems. Do you have a favorite? Do you find that the poems illuminate the narrative? If so in what way? Or do you find the poetry distracting? Consider the times that the author broke out of a poem into prose, then back into poetry again. Is there anything in particular that seems to prompt the changes from one mode to the other?
• “Poetic prose” and “prosey poetry”

• Story is told in prose and poetry, and the poetry is written just like a story, so it’s hard to tell the difference

• Genocide is a favorite poem

9. What have you learned about life on an Indian Reservation? What insights have you gleaned from this memoir into Native American culture? Did anything especially surprise you, impress you, delight you, anger you, or sadden you?

• Reminders of the horror of conditions

• Complete disregard by U.S. for history, life, or repercussions (uranium mining, salmon)

• Lousy land, not original places they lived, but it did allow communities to stay together
• “What is it like to be a Spokane Indian without wild salmon? It is like being a Christian if Jesus had never rolled back the stone and risen from his tomb.”
• “In the indigenous world, we assign sacred value to circles. But sometimes a circle just means you keep returning to the same shit again and again. This book is a series of circles, sacred and profane.”
• “My mother and grandmother’s conversation doesn’t belong in the cloud.   That old song is too sacred for the Internet.”

POEMS

Sibling Rivalry
Yes, my mother was a better mother
To my sisters and brothers,
But they were better children
Than me, the prodigal who yearned
And spurned and never returned.”

“Do you understand how one small dog—afraid of the wolves who had attacked him and those who would attack him anew—might stand on his hind legs, might evolve in a moment, so he could run away and never return?”

Self-Exam
Dear audience, please stand if you were raised
By a terrible mother. Okay, okay,
Approximately half of you. So I'd say
That terrible mothers are commonplace.
Just like terrible fathers. So let's mourn
For the children who never knew childhood.
Our grief is justified. Our anger is good.
I won't blame children for childish scorn.
But there comes a day when a broken child
Becomes an adult. On that day, you'll need
To choose between the domestic and wild.
You'll need to escalate war or declare peace.
I tell you this because I'm the kid, mother-stung,
Who became a terrible adult son.
And I'm to blame for that. I made that mess.
Because I am the Amateur of Forgiveness.”

 (p. 220-224)

Quotes

“If it’s fiction, then it better be true”

“Vulnerability hangover”

“If Heaven ain't filled with gender-swapping Indians," I said, "then I don't want to go there.”

“But a person can be genocided-can have every connection to his past severed- and live to be an old man whose rib cage is a haunted house built around his heart.”

“What about me?” I asked. “Am I mean?” “You aren’t mean to me with words,” she said. “You’re mean to me with your silences.”

“I TEND TO believe in government because it was the U.S. government that paid for my brain surgery when I was five months old and provided USDA food so I wouldn’t starve during my poverty-crushed reservation childhood and built the HUD house that kept us warm and gave me scholarship money for the college education that freed me. Of course, the government only gave me all of that good shit because they completely fucked over my great-grandparents and grandparents but, you know, at least some official white folks keep some of their promises.”

“I cannot defeat cancer. Nobody defeats cancer. There is no winning or losing. There is no surviving or not surviving. There are only coin flips: heads or tails; benign or malignant; weight loss or bloating; morphine or oxycodone; extreme rescue efforts or Do Not Resuscitate; live or die.”

“Dear wife, I'm sorry that I am mysteriously incapable of folding clean laundry, but I iron, oh, I iron. Sweetheart, I'll make your white shirt so crisp and sharp that it will split atoms as you walk.”

“Dear friends, my brain— Unpredictable as it was—is even more unpredictable now. But thank God for all of the ways in which we compensate For our deficiencies. In order to play Ping-Pong—in order to make it Through this crazy life—I needed somebody to step in and take  The next shot. So let’s call this a Ping-Pong prayer. Let’s call it A Ping-Pong jubilation. I am not alone in this world. I am not Alone in this world. I am not alone in this world. I am not alone In this world. I will never be alone, my friends, and as long as I am Alive to be your teammate, neither will any of you.”

 “I would guess, perhaps too optimistically, that nearly ever racist believes it is morally wrong to be racist. And since nearly every person thinks of themselves as being moral, then a racist must consciously and subconsciously employ tortured logic in order to explain away their racism--in order to believe themselves to be nonracist.”

 “We shuffled past white customers who stared at us with hate, pity, disgust, and anger—the Four Horsemen of the Anti-Indian Apocalypse.”

“I didn’t yet know that romantic heroes—famous and not—are usually aimless nomads in disguise.”

“Reardan High School is located in the whitest and most conservative county in Washington. Thirty-six years after those white conservative kids in Reardan unanimously elected me freshman-class president (after Alexie transferred there from the rez school previously attended), I wonder how many of them voted for (the racist, sexist, homophobic, and immoral) Donald Trump. How many of their parents and siblings voted for Trump? How many of my former teachers voted for Trump? Trump won 72% of the Lincoln County vote… Of the dozens of Reardan folks I still know, I am aware of only five who are vocal and active Democrats.”

“How do I make sense of this? How is it possible that I, the lifelong indigenous liberal, became so popular – so loved and loving – in that conservative community? How did I become captain of the basketball team, prom royalty, and president of the Future Farmers of America?”

“Was it because I was had a killer jump shot and spin move on the basketball court? Was it because I was once handsome and slender enough to be called pretty despite all my real and perceived scars? Was it because I could publicly speak my mind with quick wit and honesty? Was it because I was so book-smart?…”

“So perhaps I was the beneficiary of a white small town’s honest meritocracy. I was good at everything that a Reardan kid was supposed to be good at… So maybe that made my indigenous and liberal identities of secondary importance to those white kids and their parents. But I wonder if my race would have been more of an issue if I’d been a non-athlete. If I’d been only an average student. If I’d been plain or overweight or socially awkward. Or if I hadn’t been such a natural diplomat.”

“I was the best, or among the best, in the school at nearly every academic and extracurricular activity, so it was demonstrably impossible for anyone in Reardan to think of me as inferior to any of those white kids. I think I overwhelmed most overt or latent racism with the sheer force and size of my abilities.”

“But was I also accepted because it’s difficult to be actively racist, sexist, or homophobic on a one-to-one basis? It’s hard to be anti-Indian when an Indian is sitting next to you in a classroom. Though I did learn it’s pretty easy for a white conservative father and mother to be vocally anti-Indian when their daughter is dating a rez boy like me.”

“But, damn, after high school and college, and a decade into my very public and leftist artistic career, the town or Reardan asked me to be the grand marshal for their Community Day parade. I said yes, of course, and proudly rode on a mule-driven wagon through town while waving at so many of my old friends and teachers. How did that happen? How did all of those future Trump voters – all of those folks willing to validate and empower that rich man’s bigotry – come to celebrate the poor brown boy who grew up in their white town?”

“I know the answer has a lot to do with basic human decency, and also with the seductive nature of fame, but I think the answer has most to do with compartmentalism. It’s easy for a white racist to fall in love with and accept one member of a minority – one Indian – and their real and perceived talents and flaws. But it’s much tougher for a racist to accept a dozen Indians. And impossible for a white racist to accept the entire race of Indians – or an entire race of any nonwhite people…”

I have lost track of the number of times a white person, hilariously thinking they were being complimentary, has said to me, “But, Sherman, I don’t think of you as an Indian”. Throughout my rural and urban life, among white conservative and white liberals, I’ve heard many other variations on that same basic sentiment.

          “Sherman, you’re not like other Indians.”

          “Sherman, you’re a credit to your race.”

          “Sherman, you barely seem Indian”.

          “Sherman, I don’t think of you as being Indian, I think of you as being a person.”

          “Sherman, you’re not a Native writer. You’re a writer.”

          “Sherman, I don’t see color. I see the person inside.”

“All of these statements mean the same thing: “Sherman, in order to fit you and your indigenous identity into my worldview, I have to think of you as being like me – as being white like me.”

“I suspect that some of my white friends, if they are reading this, don’t recognize themselves as a person who has said racist things directly to me – who cannot even recognize the racism present in such statements.”

“In being friends with white people, I’ve always had to live entirely inside their circle of experience – inside their white world. And my white friends have rarely, if ever, spent even a moment in my indigenous world…”

“So at Reardan High, I was successful and acceptable and loved because I was – and still am – great at negotiating with whiteness. But that means my white friends often mistakenly believe that my ability to successfully negotiate the white worked means that I am white – or more white than Native…”

“But here I must also indict the strange anti-Indian racism of many Native Americans who have, over my nearly-twenty-five-year literary career, sought to discount, discredit, and demolish me as a writer and as an indigenous person. These are the Natives who, like white racists, mistakenly attribute my success to my perceived whiteness. These are the Natives who cannot believe that a reservation-raised boy could ever become the man I am.”

ADDITIONAL NOTE:

It has come to light that Sherman Alexie has been accused of sexual misconduct. At this book group and other book groups, we have discussed this inside and out. The summarize, three significant points need to be kept in mind.

• No one is a saint or perfect. No one.

• Many role models we learn about have a blemished past, and it is never discussed when they are white (Abraham Lincoln, George Washington).

• We can (and need to) keep separate the “art” and the “author.”

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

In one of her online interviews, Gyasi responds to the question, "Where is home for you?" with the following: "It is a complicated question. Home right now is Oakland, California. But again I think I have known for many years that home, for me, can never really be a place. It is this thing that you carry inside of you, similar to these characters, particularly the Afro-American ones who have been ripped away from their original homes and yet have this connection to the land. Home is this little light that you carry inside you wherever you go."

FAMILY TREES

Effia's Family
Cobbee Otcher: Effia’s Father
Baaba: Cobbee’s first wife, not Effia’s biological mother, but reluctantly raises Effia until she can send her away in marriage
Effia Otcher: Fante, married to James to strengthen relationship between village and white men
Fiifi: Effia’s half-brother
James Collins: Governor of Cape Coast Castle, marries Effia
Quey Collins: Fante and British son of Effia and James
Cudjo Sackee: Quey’s friend from a prominent Fante village
Nana Yaa Yeboah: eldest daughter of powerful Asante king, forced into marriage with Quey
James Richard Collins: Fante, Asante and British: Quey and Nana’s son
Amma: James’ first wife whom he doesn’t chose and doesn’t love
Akosua Mensah: Asante, James’ second wife
Abena Collins: only child of James (Unlucky) and Akosua; drowned by missionary when her daughter is a baby
Ohene Nyarko: Abena’s lover
Akua Collins: only child of Abena, raised by missionaries in Kumasi, nightmares of firewoman; becomes the Crazy Woman; lives in Edweso
Asamoah Agyekym: Akua’s Asante husband, becomes the Crippled Man
Abee and Ama: Akua’s children whom she burns to death in their sleep
Nana Serwah: Asamoah’s mother who exiles Akua
Yaw Agyekum: Akua’s son who Asamoah saves from being burned, becomes history teacher
Esther Amoah: comes to clean for Yaw and becomes his wife
Marjorie Agyekum: Daughter of Yaw and Esther

Esi's Family
Maame: Esi’s and Effia’s mother.
Big Man Asare: Esi’s father, skilled and brave Asante warrior who foolishly rushed into conflict, but realized his folly after he was rescued and earned nickname, “It takes a big man to admit his folly.”
Esi Assare: to befriend Adbronoma, Esi sends word to Abronoma’s father that his daughter is a captive. Esi is sold as a slave and raped at the Castle and sold into slavery in U.S.
Abronoma: houseslave for Maame, captive from another tribe.
Ness Stockham: Esi’s daughter, field slave to Thomas Allan Stockham in Alabama
Pinky: Mute slave girl on Stockham’s plantation
Sam: Ness’ husband chosen by the slave owners. Hung by slaveowner
Kojo Freeman: Ness and Sam’s son, taken to Baltimore by Ma Aku
Ma Aku: Asante woman who takes Kojo north in U.S.
Anna Foster: Kojo’s wife, kidnapped when pregnant and commits suicide after H is born
H Black: Kojo and Anna’s son, arrested after the Civil War and sold to work in coal mine in Alabama
Joecy: friend H met as a convict in coal mines and seeks out in Pratt City when released
Ethe Jackson: woman H met before his time as a convict and who he seeks out when released
Wille Black: daughter of H and Ethe, gifted singer, moves from Pratt City to Harlem
Robert Clifton: Willie’s husband from Pratt City who is a very light-skinned black man
Eli: poet of sorts who is transient in Willie's life
Carson “Sonny” Clifton: Willie and Robert’s child
Josephine: Willie and Eli’s child
Amani Zulema: singer and drug addict
Marcus Clifton: Son of sonny and Amani

Approximate Time Periods
Effia and Esi: 1760’s to 1780’s
Quey and Ness: 1800 to 1820’s
James and Kojo: 1820’s to 1860
Abena and H: 1860s to 1890s
Akua and Willie: 1890s to 1920s
Yaw and Sonny: 1940s to 1980s
Marjorie and Marcus: 2000’s

Questions and Topics for Discussion: Chosen from a longer list of questions
1. What perspective does the book offer on the subject of beliefs and otherness? For instance, does the book delineate between superstition and belief? Why does Ma Aku reprimand Jo after he is kicked out of church? What do the Missionary and the fetish man contribute to a dialogue on beliefs and otherness? Does the book ultimately suggest the best way to confront beliefs that are foreign to us?

2. Evaluate the treatment and role of women in the novel. What role does marriage play within the cultures represented in the novel and how are the women treated as a result? Likewise, what significance does fertility and motherhood have for the women and how does it influence their treatment? In the chapter entitled “Effia,” what does Adwoa tell Effia that her coupling with James is really about? In its depiction of the collective experiences of the female characters, what does the book seem to reveal about womanhood? How different would you say the treatment and role of women is today? Discuss.

3. Analyze the structure of the book. Why do you think the author assigned a chapter to each of the major characters? What points of view are represented therein? Does any single point of view seem to stand out among the rest or do you believe that the author presented a balanced point of view? Explain. Although each chapter is distinct, what do the stories have in common when considered collectively? How might your interpretation of the book differ if the author had chosen to tell the story from a single point of view?

4. Consider the setting of the book. What time periods are represented and what places are adopted as settings? Why do you think that the author chose these particular settings? What subjects and themes are illuminated via these particular choices? How does the extensive scope of the book help to unify these themes and create a cohesive treatment of the subjects therein?

5. Why does Akosua Mensah insist to James, “I will be my own nation” (99)? What role do patriotism, heritage, and tradition play in contributing to the injustices, prejudices, and violence depicted in the book? Which other characters seem to share Akosua’s point of view?

6. Explore the theme of complicity. What are some examples of complicity found in the novel? Who is complicit in the slave trade? Where do most of the slaves come from and who trades them? Who does Abena’s father say is ultimately responsible (142)? Do you agree with him? Explain why or why not.

7. Examine the relationships between parents and children in the book. How would you characterize these relationships? Do the children seem to understand their parents and have good relationships with them and vice versa? Do the characters’ views of their parents change or evolve as they grow up? How do the characters’ relationships with their parents influence the way that they raise their own children?

8. What significance does naming have in the book? Why do some of the characters have to change or give up their names? Likewise, what do the characters’ nicknames reveal both about them and about those who give or repeat these names? What does this dialogue ultimately suggest about the power of language and naming?

9. Sonny says that the problem in America “wasn’t segregation but the fact that you could not, in fact, segregate” (244)? What does he mean by this? What does Sonny say that he is forced to feel because of segregation? Which of the other characters experience these same feelings and hardships? Does there seem to be any progress as the story goes on? If so, how is progress achieved? Alternatively, what stymies and slows progress in this area?

10. Consider the book’s treatment of colonialism and imperialism. In the chapter entitled “Esi” at the start of the book, what does Esi’s mother tell her daughter that weakness and strength really are? How does her definition of weakness and strength correspond to the dialogue about colonialism and imperialism that runs throughout the book? Discuss how this dialogue expands into a deeper conversation about freedom and human rights. Have the issues surrounding colonialism, imperialism, freedom, and human rights featured in the book been resolved today or do they linger? If they remain, does the book ultimately offer any suggestions or advice as to how this might be remedied?

More Discussion Questions:

1.     Discuss the theme of fire throughout the book.

2.     Discuss the meaning of family and ancestry, knowing where you come from in this book.

3.     How are women treated within different cultures in this novel?

4.     Discuss the importance of scars as a theme in this book.  Does the author believe that scars can be inherited or passed down from one generation to the next?

5.     Who was your favorite character and why?  Which chapter did you like best?

6.     Discuss the meaning of obroni and the effect this word had on people.

7.     What do you think the meaning of the title “Homegoing” is?

8.     What effect do the British have on Africa as slave traders?  as missionaries?

9.     Discuss the theme of rape in the book.  Both Ese’s mame and Ese are raped as slaves.

10.  Discuss the theme of power and the various places it is found:  in Effia’s beauty, in Kujo’s physical strength, in James’ lineage…

11.  Discuss the character of Quey and how his father deals with his apparent homosexuality.

12.  How is race perceived differently in different locations?  Africa, the south vs. the north?

13.  How is race defined in different ways within the novel?  By skin color, by speech?

14.  What is the role of religion and belief systems within this novel?

15.  Discuss the quotes mentioned above and their relevance to the novel and it’s themes.

16.  Yaw is a teacher of history.  What does he teach his students about the learning of history?  How is the theme of storytelling important within this chapter as well as throughout the novel?

17.  Discuss the figure of Akua.  Crazy woman or sage woman?  Is it a matter of interpretation?

Summary

Homegoing follows the lives of half-sisters, Effia and Esi, born unknown to one another in 18th-century West Africa. Slavery binds their blood, its legacy inscribed on their descendants over three centuries of African and African-American experience.

Effia is born in Fanteland on the night of a terrible fire; considered cursed, she is married off to the governor of the nearby British colony. She lives well at Cape Coast Castle, the huge British fort and slave port. Effia learns that her real birth mother was an Asante woman enslaved by her father, who escaped during the fire. (We later learn that her name is Maaman. After her escape, she married an Asante leader and bore a second daughter: Esi.) As the British inflame tribal rivalries, Fante and Asante raid one another capturing prisoners to sell to the whites.

Effia's son Quey continues his father's slave trade, advising the Fante leaders, Badu and Fiifi (Quey's uncle). Ever-hungry for gold and glory, they rashly kidnap the Asante king's daughter and Quey must marry her to avert war with the Asante. Their unhappy marriage convinces their son, James, to reject the slave trade. He runs away with an Asante woman. The star-crossed lovers flee deep into Asanteland, eking out a living as farmers. Abena, their daughter, blames her parents' nameless past for her lack of suitors. Shamed by a lover's final rejection, she runs away to a mission to give birth to her daughter, Akua.

Abused for years by the priest, at sixteen Akua escapes the mission to marry Asamoah, an Asante warrior; soon they have two young daughters. The British exile the Asante king. As the enraged Asante nation rises up to do battle, Akua has terrible visions of a fire-woman; they worsen over the months Asamoah is away at war. Angry over Akua's screaming nightmares, her mother-in-law locks her up without food or water. Asamoah, badly wounded, returns a week later. She is saved, but imprisonment has shattered her mind. They console one another and conceive a son, Yaw. Tragically, just after Yaw's birth Akua is "possessed" by the fire-woman and sets fire to her children. Only Yaw survives. Asamoah defends her, telling the villagers she must live to raise his son.

Badly scarred, Yaw is a reserved, scholarly, and kind. He marries late in life and dotes on his daughter Marjorie. She spends many summers with her "crazy" grandmother Akua, who has gradually recovered her senses (and been granted some forgiveness by Yaw). Inspired by Akua's old stories, Marjorie becomes a gifted writer. She meets a fellow grad student named Marcus and they visit Cape Coast Castle together. Unaware of their distant blood ties, they bring Effia and Esi's stories full circle.

Meanwhile, Esi grows up in Asanteland. A Fante girl, captured and enslaved as their house-girl, is the one that tells Esi her own mother was a slave in Fanteland. Contrite, Esi innocently agrees to send a secret message to the girl's father. Fante warriors arrive, and Esi is soon imprisoned as "cargo" in the dungeons of the very fort where Effia lives. She is raped by a soldier and shipped to America for sale. Esi's daughter Ness endures all the horrors of slavery. Resolving that her son Kojo will be free, she sacrifices herself to ensure his escape.

In Baltimore, "Jo" lives free under faked papers. His wife Anna's are real, but that matters little after the Fugitive Slave Act passes: Anna, pregnant, is kidnapped and sold as a slave. Their son H, born a slave, becomes a coal miner after the Civil War. Active in the labor unions, H brings his daughter Willie to sing the national anthem at union meetings. There she meets Robert Carson, the lightest-skinned black man she has ever seen. They marry and move to Harlem, where Willie looks forward to singing in jazz clubs. While Club owners tell Willie she's "too black" to be onstage, Robert eagerly embraces his ability to pass as white. The conflict drives them apart. Willie struggles to raise their son Carson alone, but finds renewed joy singing in her church's choir.

Carson (aka "Sonny") grows up angry over the injustices blacks still face at every turn. As a housing rep for the NAACP in Harlem, he is frequently jailed for his activism. Increasingly demoralized, Sonny turns to drugs. His involvement with a sultry but self-destructive jazz singer produces a child, Marcus. Marcus is a PhD student at Stanford when he spots a fascinating young woman named Marjorie. In the final chapter, he and Marjorie travel to Ghana together. A sense of promise hangs in the air as they splash in the ocean beside Cape Coast Castle.

Quotes 

Following are just a few of the many phrases Gyasi shares that reflect the many themes.  The ones we reflected upon are highlighted.

Belief and Religion

“god, a being who himself was made up of three but who allowed men to marry only one.”

Chapter: Effia 

“‘The white man’s god is just like the white man. He thinks he is the only god, just like the white man thinks he is the only man. But the only reason he is god instead of Nyame or Chukwu or whoever is because we let him be. We do not fight him. We do not even question him.’”

Chapter: Kojo

“Prayer was not a sacred or holy thing. It was not spoken plainly, in Twi or English. It need not be performed on the knees or with folded palms. For Akua, prayer was a frenzied chant, a language for those desires of the heart that even the mind did not recognize were there.”

Chapter: Akua 

“Forgiveness, they shouted, all the while committing their wrongs. When he was younger, Yaw wondered why they did not preach that the people should avoid wrongdoing altogether.”

Chapter: Yaw

History and Stories

“Ancestors, whole histories, came with the act, but so did sins and curses.”

Chapter: Effia

“The British were no longer selling slaves to America, but slavery had not ended, and his father did not seem to think that it would end. They would just trade one type of shackles for another, trade physical ones that wrapped around wrists and ankles for the invisible ones that wrapped around the mind.”

Chapter: James

“The Asante had power from capturing slaves. The Fante had protection from trading them.  If the girl could not shake his hands, then surely she could never touch own."

Chapter: James

“History is storytelling”

Chapter: Yaw

“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?”

Chapter: Yaw 

“the problem with America wasn’t segregation but the fact that you could not, in fact, segregate.

Chapter: Sonny

Self-preservation

"You can learn anything when you have to learn it. You could learn to fly if it meant you would live another day."
Chapter: Esi

“Now that she had a plan, a hope for a way out, she felt emboldened.”
Chapter: Akua

“Eat or be eater. Capture of be captured. Marry for protection.”
Chapter: Quey

“’But if we do not like the person we have learned to be, should we just sit in front of our fufu, doing nothing? I think, James, that maybe it is possible to make a new way.”
Chapter: James

“No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free.”
Chapter: Yaw

“Not the being lost, but the being found.”
Chapter: Marcus

Personal History

“Tell a lie long enough and it will turn to truth.”
Chapter: Kojo

"There should be no room in your life for regret. If in the moment of doing you felt clarity, you felt certainty, then why feel regret later?"
Chapter Abena

“playing his strange game of student/teacher, heathen/savior, but with Assamoah she saw that maybe her life could be something different from what she had always imagined it would be.”
Chapter: Abena 

“How can I tell you the story of your scar without first telling you the story of my dreams? And how do I talk about my dreams without talking about my family? Our family?”

Chapter: Yaw

“When they were living they had not known where they came from, and so dead, they did not know how to get to dry land.  I put you in here so that if your spirit ever wandered, you would know where home was… It was their summer ritual, her grandmother reminding her how to come home.”

Chapter: Marjorie

“How could he talk about Great-Grandpa H’s story without also talking about his grandma Willie and the missions of other black people who had migrated north, fleeing Jim Crow? And if he mentioned the Great Migration, he’d have to talk about the citities that took that flock in. He’d have to talk about Harlem…”

Chapter: Marcus 

“… the feeling of time, of having been a part of something that stretched so far back, was so impossibly large, that it was easy to forget that she, and he, and everyone else, existed in it—not apart from it, but inside of it.”

Chapter: Marcus 

“Marcus was an accumulation of these times. That was the point.”
Chapter: Marcus

Assessing Others

You can only decide a wicked man by what he does.
Chapter: Akua

“‘People think they are coming to me for advice,’ Mampanyin said, ‘but really, they come to me for permission. If you want to do something, do it.”
Chapter: James

“Willie smiled at Robert, and it wasn’t until that smile that she realized she forgave him.  She felt like the smile had opened a valve, like the pressure of anger and sadness and confusion and loss was shooting out of her, in the sky and away.”
Chapter: Willie

In one of her online interviews, Gyasi responds to the question, "Where is home for you?" with the following: "It is a complicated question. Home right now is Oakland, California. But again I think I have known for many years that home, for me, can never really be a place. It is this thing that you carry inside of you, similar to these characters, particularly the Afro-American ones who have been ripped away from their original homes and yet have this connection to the land. Home is this little light that you carry inside you wherever you go."