The Atlantic Slave Trade in Homegoing: Personalizing the Global History of Slavery

In Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi provides a deeply personal and emotional exploration of the Atlantic slave trade, using the lives of two half-sisters and their descendants to trace its devastating effects across centuries and continents. The novel moves from Africa to the United States and back to Ghana, making the broader historical and global context of slavery tangible through the intimate stories of the characters. Gyasi’s humanization of the transatlantic slave trade allows readers to engage with history not just as a distant event, but as a lived experience, felt deeply by individuals and families over generations.

The novel opens with the contrasting fates of Effia and Esi, two half-sisters separated by the cruel divisions of the slave trade. Effia is married off to a British slave trader, becoming part of the system that exploits her own people. Esi, on the other hand, is sold into slavery and shipped to America, where she becomes part of the brutal system that dehumanizes Africans. These two fates illustrate the stark differences in how the slave trade affected individuals and communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Effia’s family’s involvement in the slave trade, while offering material advantages, complicates her sense of identity, while Esi’s experience as a victim of the trade sets her on a path of unimaginable suffering.

As the novel progresses, Gyasi traces the generational impact of the slave trade through the descendants of Effia and Esi. In America, the descendants of Esi face the enduring effects of slavery through racism, segregation, and systemic violence, while in Ghana, the descendants of Effia are impacted by the aftershocks of colonialism and its link to the slave trade. Gyasi’s careful attention to the lived experiences of these characters shows how the slave trade, while it may appear as a historical event, has left lasting scars that continue to shape the identities and futures of the characters.

By focusing on personal stories within the global context of the slave trade, Homegoing allows readers to understand the depth and complexity of slavery’s effects. It is not merely a historical phenomenon but a continuous thread of suffering, survival, and resistance that defines the lives of countless individuals. Through the generations of Effia and Esi’s descendants, Gyasi highlights the ways in which the effects of slavery—racial violence, social inequality, and internalized trauma—continue to reverberate across time and space.