How long is Homegoing audiobook?

Why is H called H in Homegoing?

Thomas asks H about his name. H explains that his mother, Anna, called him H before she gave birth.

What is the message in Homegoing?

The Horrors of Colonization and Slavery

While Effia’s family benefits from the wealth brought by colonization and slavery, Esi’s family suffers from it. However, Homegoing shows how colonization and slavery indubitably bring harm to everyone involved.

What does blood symbolize in Homegoing?

The symbol of blood in the Esi chapter represents the violence and oppression that the slaves faced during colonialism. They were forced to walk miles until their feet bled and perform labor that nearly killed them. The bloodline of Esi’s family will always feel the effects of slavery.

What does Homegoing mean in funeral?

July 2019) A homegoing (or home-going) service is an African-American and Black-Canadian Christian funeral tradition marking the going home of the deceased to the Lord or to heaven. It is a celebration that has become a vibrant part of African American and Black Canadian history and culture.

What does the black stone symbolize in Homegoing?

In Homegoing, the black stones that Maame gives to each of her two daughters, Effia and Esi, symbolize a person’s connection to his or her heritage. Effia remains on the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), and her stone is passed down through seven generations of her descendants, ending with Marjorie.

Why did Maame set fire?

Fire. The fire Maame creates to escape her enslavement sets off a chain of events that will plague both sides of the family for generations. Since Effia is left behind to be cared for by Baaba after the fire, she is eventually forced to marry a British slave trader, James Collins.

What does fire and water mean in Homegoing?

Fire and water depict the theme of slavery and the role that it plays for many generations. The motifs of fire and water represent slavery, as well as Effia and Esi’s sides of the family tree that help enable the author to track the lives of one family.

What does the ocean symbolize in Homegoing?

In Homegoing, water symbolizes the pain and suffering of slavery and racism, and specifically how slavery violently uproots people from their homes. This association begins when Esi is sent from the Gold Coast (modern-day… Emanuel, Lizzy.

What does Big Man mean in Homegoing?

Esi’s father and Maame’s husband. Big Man is a warrior for an Asante village. Anna. Kojo’s wife and Agnes’ mother who is kidnapped and sold into slavery when she is pregnant with H. She kills herself before she gives birth, and the master has to cut H out of her stomach.

What does the title Homegoing mean?

“Homegoing”—the title is taken from an old African-American belief that death allowed an enslaved person’s spirit to travel back to Africa—is rooted, like the Bible, in original sin.

What does the fire symbolize in Homegoing?

Fire represents the pain that plagues the characters on the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) due to their family’s participation in the slave trade. Many of the characters are afraid of fire or are haunted by it.

Why did Akua burn her kids?

Back in the hut, Nana Serwah and the doctor tend to Yaw’s wounds. They will not tell Akua where Abee and Ama Serwah are. That Akua’s family history causes her to kill her children serves as an allegory of the way in which colonization and slavery has hindered future generations, both on the Gold Coast and in America.

Who is unlucky in Homegoing?

He runs away from the wife who had been promised to him, Amma Atta, and instead goes to live with a poor Asante girl named Akosua, with whom he has a daughter named Abena. Though his crops fail to grow—earning him the nickname “Unlucky”—he is constantly thankful that he no longer has to participate in the slave trade.

Why was the white man burned Homegoing?

Akua has been unable to stop her nightmares of a woman made of fire holding two babies. One night, Akua’s husband, Asamoah, wakes her from a nightmare, and she tells him that he shouldn’t have burned the white man in retribution for the British arresting and exiling the Asante king.

What is wrong with Akua in homegoing?

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.

Why was QUEY a lonely child?

Quey is a lonely child, in part because he does not feel he belongs to either culture, neither English nor Fante.