Booking and details
Dates Thu, Feb 1, 2024, 6:30pm
Tickets Free, Registration required
Duration 6:30pm - 8:00pm (ET)
Our February 2024 Pick
Homegoing
by Yaa Gyasi
A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralded the arrival of Yaa Gyasi as a major new voice in contemporary fiction.
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, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.
Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi’s magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control.
Why did we choose this?
The Folger Shakespeare Library’s collection explores not only Shakespeare’s life and works, but also the plays’ historical context, source material, critical and performance histories, and the ways in which they inspire and are adapted by contemporary novelists.
The Folger collections spans centuries, as does Gyasi’s moving generational novel. By considering our collection alongside the ongoing legacies of colonialism and enslavement through time, we gain a fuller understanding of the historical context of these items.
About the Book Club
Our informal Book Club is free and open to all. Our picks range from historical fiction to adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, encompassing a wide variety of genres—all sourced from a different local, independent bookstore partner each month.
Each session begins with a guest speaker exploring that month’s pick and highlighting items from the Folger collection related to the plot and themes of the novel. After the presentation, participants will be broken into smaller groups for breakout discussions, moderated by a team of staff and volunteers.
Content transparency
Homegoing includes potentially sensitive subjects. Expand below for a full list of content.
- Slavery
- Racism & racial slurs
- Rape
- Arranged marriage
- Substance addiction / Drug abuse
- Death of a child
- Fire
- War themes
- Physical Abuse: whippings, beatings, slapping
- Emotional Abuse
- Bullying
- Abandoned children and child neglect
- Spouse Abandonment
- Abduction
- Police Brutality
Guest Speaker
Ivie Orobaton
Ivie Orobaton is a Researcher and Exhibition Specialist for the Center for the Study of Global Slavery at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture actively working on the “In Slavery’s Wake” exhibition project. She holds a B.A. from the College of William and Mary with a double major in History and Anthropology. Her undergraduate research was centered around health and racism; her Honors Thesis, White Plague, White City: Landscape and the Racialization of Tuberculosis in Washington, D.C. from 1846 to 1960, sought to explain how the intellectual rhetoric around racism and health in the 19th century impacted access to tuberculosis treatment and living spaces inhabited by African Americans in Washington, D.C. Her current research primarily focuses on French colonialism and slavery in West Africa, the French Antilles, and the French Indian Ocean colonies.
For our February session, we are excited to partner with Loyalty Bookstores, a Black, Queer, and Asian owned independent bookstore in the Petworth neighborhood of DC and in downtown Silver Spring, MD that specializes in diverse books.
Please be aware that Loyalty Bookstores are taking safety precautions related to COVID-19. Both stores are open for both shopping and in-store pickup. Masking is optional in store and we offer masks for customers if they would like one. Staff will continue to mask and test regularly for the foreseeable future. Place your order online through their website or pick up the book in either location. Click here for further information on current policies and operations.
To learn more, visit loyaltybookstores.com or find them on Instagram or Twitter @loyaltybooks.
We would like to thank the following organizations for their generous support of this program
