Recent Reviews
Homegoing by Yaa Gysai
Yaa Gyasi’s powerful and painful novel begins in Ghana in the late 1700’s where we meet two half-sisters, Effia and Esi. James Collins, the British governor of the western African “Gold Coast,” marries Effia. Effia moves into the large white castle with Collins and he treats her well. However, Collins reigns over the castle’s dungeon where unbeknownst to Effia, her half-sister Esi waits to be sold into American slavery. The novel’s harrowing narrative rotates between the travails of Effia’s descendants in Africa and Esi’s descendants in America. Both Effia and Esi’s children must contend with new versions of subjugation.
Each generation finds themselves captive to some trauma at the hand of white men. Over time, Esi’s progeny experience captivity in the dungeon, the horror of the ship ride to America, the barbarity of rape and slavery, freed slaves sent back to plantations, indentured servitude, Jim Crow laws of the South, and the drug trade and prejudice in the North. Effia’s progeny in Africa experience fierce battles between the Ashanti and Fanti tribes as they fight for the right to align with European countries to profit from the slave trade. There are tribal wars, sexual violence, machete battles, Colonialism, fires, madness, banishment, and isolation. On both continents, old oppressions end and new ones take their place.
Like a richly textured painting, Homegoing is layered with generations of pain and suffering. It is as if the layers of tragedy are seemingly transferred consciously and unconsciously from one generation to the next. It becomes clear that the dominant survival task of each generation is to navigate the oppression they experience while hoping for a better life for their children. Overcoming racism and/or oppressive tribal customs is a daily task of the characters we meet.
The novel’s structure is as effective as it is impressive. Gyasi does not follow each person from birth to death but instead allows each son or daughter to pick up the narrative from his or her perspective as they connect their own decisions to the hard choices made by their parents. Each individual must navigate oppressive institutional racism along the way.
In beautiful language, Gyasi conveys how, even centuries later, Effia’s seventh great-granddaughter living in the present carries the burden of all the suffering that came before. Marjorie says, “She feared that the nightmares would come for her too, that she too would be chosen by the ancestors to hear their family stories.” In spite of all the horror, the characters exhibit a deep spirituality and psychological awareness about their plight. Even with incremental improvements in the lives of each generation, Gyasi says, “No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free.”
In the final pages of "Homegoing", Esi’s seventh great-grandson Marcus Clifton, a Ph. D. candidate at Stanford University, wonders, “How could he explain it to (his girlfriend) Marjorie that what he wanted to capture with his project was 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.” I believe that this desire is what Gyasi sought to achieve in her novel. She has achieved her goal and so much more.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
I enjoyed Celeste Ng’s second novel Little Fires Everywhere. The drama blasts open when Izzy Richardson, the youngest of Elena and Duncan Richardson’s four children, sets their family home on fire. The novel then retraces the events preceding the fire. Ng digs into the inner lives of Elena Richardson and her children to show us that families that look “put together” from the outside can actually be unhealthy and dysfunctional, while families that look atypical can be healthy and functional. Such irony would not please Elena Richardson who marries her college sweetheart, has four children and, in a concession to motherhood, writes fluffy personal interest stories rather than investigative journalism pieces for the local paper. Like her mother and grandmother, Elena was raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio, in a planned and rule-bound community founded by the Shakers at the turn of the century. She remains in Shaker Heights and relishes in the knowledge and security that derive from her lineage.
When she rents her rental property to a peripatetic artist named Mia and Mia's high school daughter, Pearl, the Richardson family is permanently altered. Pearl becomes enthralled with three of Elena’s teenagers while the fourth child, Izzy, spends her time helping Mia with her art projects. Izzy feels understood and appreciated when she is with Mia, and Pearl is enamored of the bustling Richardson home.
When Mia helps a destitute co-worker who drops her infant off at the fire station, it is a catalytic moment in the narrative. Elena Richardson’s best friend, Linda McCullough, has adopted the young infant. A custody battle ensues, with Mia helping the young co-worker get her baby back while Elena and her husband fight for the adoptive parents. “So it was her tenant, her quiet little eager-to-please tenant, who had started all of this. Who had, for reasons still unclear, decided to upend the poor McCulloughs’ lives.” Elena Richardson feels that Mia has betrayed her. She turns to her investigative journalism skills to track down Mia’s past. Like a detective, she visits Mia’s estranged parents and learns about events that led to Pearl’s birth and Pearl's unnamed father. (I like where Celeste Ng was taking her readers, but I needed more signals to convince me that Elena would pursue Mia’s past with such intensity.)
There are a couple of clues that Elena is jealous of Izzy’s relationship with Mia. Izzy’s birth had been difficult and frightening. Elena says, “She had learned with Izzy’s birth how your life could trundle along on its safe little track and then, with no warning, skid spectacularly off course. Every time Mrs. Richardson looked at Izzy, that feeling of things spiraling out of control coiled around her again, like a muscle she didn’t know how to unclench.” Elena’s fear reveals itself as anger when a situation involves Izzy. Does she still resent Izzy for wreaking havoc on Elena’s orderly world when Izzy was a child? The other kids model Elena’s behavior and make Izzy feel like an outcast.
Like a perfect storm, events culminate and coalesce and lead to Elena’s eviction of Mia and Pearl. For Izzy, these events are the fuse that lights the fire.
I admire Ng’s effort to explore the emotions of all her characters. She understands the complicated feelings, inner turmoil, and unique needs of her characters. Little Fires Everywhere is an excellent examination of intricate family dynamics.
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Based on the real life scandal at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, Lisa Wingate’s heartbreaking novel is told from two different points of view. First we learn the traumatic story of the five Foss siblings who are taken from their shanty boat on the Mississippi River in 1939 and placed in the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. The children’s mother and father leave to go to the hospital where their mother gives birth. Illiterate and under sedation, their mom unknowingly signs paperwork relinquishing her beloved children to the state.
When the Foss siblings first arrive at the orphanage in shock, the oldest Rill assures them that their parents’ will arrive soon to retrieve them. Yet it soon becomes clear that they are in a nightmare from which they cannot escape. Rill does everything she can to protect her younger siblings but soon her youngest brother Gabion is adopted and the four siblings never see him again. The tragedies continue to mount. The Foss siblings learn that they are all viewed as poor river rats. In time, Georgia Tann changes the children’s names and invents for each of them an impressive pedigree. It is hard to read about children being treated as nonhuman commodities by cruel adults who convince themselves that children are better off with wealthy parents than poor parents.
The other perspective of the story takes place in the present and follows Avery Stafford, a granddaughter of one of the Foss siblings. While Rill Foss’ story moves forward, Avery looks to the past to discover the hidden history of an elderly woman who is mysteriously connected to Avery’s grandmother.
Wingate captures the horror perpetuated by Georgia Tann and her enablers. Between 1939-1950, thousands of children were placed in Tann’s orphanages. Most of the children were neglected, abused, and traumatized by being ripped from their birth families. In 1951, there was a newspaper article “Adoption Matron May Have Been Most Prolific Serial Killer.” This horror show happened due to the greed and prejudice of George Tann and those she paid off. Even when the public became aware that children were stolen and treated cruelly, the Tennessee courts sealed the adoption records until 1995! Too many people must have been complicit and/or benefitted from one of Georgia Tann’s adoptions.
Though the present day part of the story is not as strong, it is a relief from the abuse. Avery Stafford does succeed in discovering her grandmother’s hidden past and connecting these two elderly Foss women. Though these women have lived happy and privileged lives far away from the river, their traumatic early years still dominate their emotional lives. The memories of their forced adoptions reside close to the surface. How could they not?
Though I wish Wingate had explored Georgia Tann’s early life and motivations for her disturbed view of the world, I believe her novel tells an important story of greed, collusion, and the systemic oppression of poor people. By creating characters with whom we can empathize, Wingate makes real the horrible events that occurred. She is both illuminating a sad story from the past and reminding her readers that powerful people can and will collude to advance their own immoral interests at the expense of those less powerful. Before We Were Yours is not an easy read and yet by the end of the book I felt buoyed by the resilience of the human sprit.
